Xeno-commander
by Ghost of Los Angeles
Summary: In the back water pocket dimension a commander build a metal extractor This story is not mine this belongs to NitroNorman over on spacebattles. Discontinued by original author.
1. Arc 1 Chapter 1

Upon Regaining consciousness, I knew several things.

The sun should have hurt my eyes. They'd been open long enough that I had trouble closing them. I was laying down on a rock with a slight inclination at my feet. It was a fairly comfortable rock, very smooth, no loose pebbles to bother me. For a time that was the extent of my knowledge.

Wait a minute. Sol isn't supposed to be that shade of yellow and red.

I was also getting a little hungry.

I finally lifted my head up and started to take a look around. I was looked at great, white, rolling summer clouds set against a rich, emerald green sky with a rocky desert landscape going on as far as I could see in all directions. Somehow this did not seem to be within expectations.

I wasn't wondering where I was: I was still working on the who, and half-heartedly toying with the why. I had a feeling I was going to be sorry that I bothered.

I was – sorry that is, for when full reconciliation burst upon me I sat bolt upright with my eyes open at the full wonder of how fucked I could possibly be.

I did not fall asleep at the beach. I don't sleep with my eyes open. I don't drink, so there was no way a couple of guys at the bar had dragged my ass out here and dumped me. Nobody hated me enough for that. I didn't have a headache. I had the feeling that I should. I was in the desert. And there was no road.

In my right hand was an object that looked like a book, 7X5X1 inches, black as polished coal and yet completely cool, grey where the paper should be. It looked like a hardcover book but it was made of some very advanced materials and charged in sunlight. It contained a complete working copy of the internet. So it was not my kindle. It even had information that had been deleted from the internet. And I could access information from other countries that our government kept its citizens from looking at. I didn't need to pay to look at super porn and all the perverted stuff you can never find. There was even information from other people's computers on there as well as videos that were never uploaded. Plus a whole bunch of, you know, other crap. Like instruction manuals to build nuclear weapons and diseases using only a few thousand dollars and some stuff you could get from the hardware store.

How did I know that? Apparently I was having memory issues.

Kay. . . .

Near my left hand was a Supreme Planetary Annihilation's Commander, Experimental, Zeno-Nano Grade 7B.

Because someone was obviously fucking with me.

It was a black alien monster with a red visor for a sensory organ. I got a read on the thing and fuck physics and myself with a cactus!

You know how the Emergency Medical Holographic Doctor's mobile holo-emitter was a piece of 29th century technology designed as a wholly self-contained holographic projector, generating the photons and force fields necessary to allow him to physically interact with its environment and go on away missions? Well this creature has over 100 trillion wormholes, each the size of an electron, projecting a force field thingy that rearranged atoms in the desired forms and held them there without flying apart or exploding. These atoms then formed cell structures, one to every wormhole, pretending to be cells, which together make a body that is just so mind-fuckingly bullshit that I need Q to drop me off a dictionary like right the fuck now for a new language it invented just to describe how large the toilet is. Its energy output is so large that it just doesn't register. I mean it clocked, but then I got lost counting the zeros.

Commanders are supposed to be made of metal! They're supposed to be equipped with all kinds of weapons and resource cores and nanomachine deployment systems and Omni-sensors and everything else. This thing was less like a shark and more like a Tardigrade. This thing was designed less to be an unstoppable self-replicating machine of war and more like something that was designed to survive the apocalypse in various forms. Each energy force-field cell-like thingy was slightly different and insured that whatever killed off the rest of it would not kill off all of it, allowing it to regenerate forever. The rest of itself was located in another dimension and looked like a self-supporting network of anti-energy.

I suppose that was one way to acquire bullshit science fiction metals: just rearrange your atoms into the proper configuration and hold them there.

Armored Commander Units are bullshit. But you knew that.

Plus it was only about three feet tall. It looked like a die-cast model for a comic con. Solid. Until it started moving, like some weird Clay-Animation special effect.

Okay, one, how the fuck did I know all that, and two, since when do humans have Omni-sensors of their own?

Give me a minute to look around here. I'd just got up and I don't have coffee.

…

I found a thing.

I have a brain implant. Pretty high grade too, I think. Someone went the extra mile because I was starting to feel like next year's model of Transhumanist ready for the floor show.

Thank you ROB.

I shook my head. Nope. Not dreaming.

I had much better all-round vision. There were some words on the book-like thing in my hand. Mostly it said, "Complete copy of Human knowledge, era 2016" but the words were so small that a human with good eyesight would still need a microscope to see them.

Also, lots more colors. There were all kinds of grey and blacks in my vision like a bad camera, but that was because my human brain wasn't yet ready to know of any other colors yet. The color wheel is an artifact of human vision, which has only three colors to see. I have lots more, I think. Jury still out on the details.

I had an "I knew kung Fu" moment as my eyeballs came online. I had a HUD. My eyes said, "Mantis-shrimp Composite Vision Mode Engaged." That's how I knew that.

So yes, my eyes are artificial. Which is why they weren't burned out when I was looking up at the sun while I was in a coma.

Let's see…

Mantis Vision System or MVS:

Although some of the amazement of the Mantis Shrimp eyeball structure have been debunked, it was still an amazing visual system for any animal to have and the name stuck.

Considered the owners of the most complex eyesight in the entire animal kingdom, with its trinocular vision, its multitude of visual pigments, its polarization sensitivity, and its intricate movements due to its placement on mobile eyestalks, it truly is the greatest and most specialized and most sophisticated natural eye in the animal kingdom of our little world, and may still outperform our own artificial creations.

As good as the Mantis Shrimp's eyes are, I'd done better because mine were designed, not evolved.

Just one of my eyes is physically larger than the Mantis Shrimp's two tiny eyes combined. The differentiating structures of the eyeballs found in the animal kingdom offered many options for improvement. Your average eyeball is composed of three fundamental components – the lens, the retina, and the optic nerve. My eyes had their nerves and blood vessels wired up properly with everything behind the retina and lenses, and with no blind spots either, enhancing image quality remarkably.

You know, of course, that Human vision is binocular. That is, we need both eyes working in tandem to see things from two angles, which allows us to perceive depth. Close one eye, and suddenly the world goes flat.

So I had a cheat – I had a partially organic, mostly cybernetic, series of Wormhole Generators lined up in parallel along my spine that I used for many things but in this instance as a part of my sensory apparatus. The actual range and number of the wormholes I could create at any one time was limited – but what an advantage they represented!

Due to the nature of manipulated space-time, each is essentially a camera lens too small to be seen by the Human eye which needs to take hundreds of photos in many different spots in a given area to gather the same amount of light as a handheld camera. (Pfft! A trivial matter when 2 trillion photos per worm-cam were being taken a second and processed in real-time!) This deficiency, however, is compensated for by the omnidirectional nature of the camera and the holographic composite of the images gathered.

I can span the wormholes outwards around my body for incredible depth perception; see everything all around me, from every angle, in every spectrum. They had the ability to replace every other data-gathering instrument by placing remote viewpoints literally anywhere in space: cameras, microphones, science sensors and even medical probes. The wormholes enabled me to move my viewpoint in any direction, even living bodies and into building materials to look at atoms.

So what types of things do I see? Well, aside from its role as a multi-visual system, the wormhole cameras are mainly used to perceive depth, obviously, but primarily the general recognition of forms and motion of objects, not color vision. Half of the worm-cams are focused on sensing one short wavelength of light (such as blue ultraviolet), while the other half of the group is dedicated to sensing long wavelengths of light (such as red for heat vision). This is similar to the compound eyes of many insects and other crustaceans.

My true eyes were a gold color like some human/beast anime Character from Go Nagai's Devil Lady TV series. Damn!

16 visual pigments, with 10 visual pigments for the detection of color, as well as additional classes of visual pigments for sensing the polarization and distribution of light and a bunch of other stuff that would allow me to see things that Humans either would not perceive (at all) or only as simple glare. This intense color sensing platform is then protected using a complex filtering system divided into tiers, so that the color of light can be adjusted for local conditions as it passes through. These color filters are mostly carotenoid compounds whose colors are purple, blue, red, orange or yellow and kran (a color only I can see as semi-transparent but which Humans think is solid) function in tuning and sharpening the wavelength range of light that reaches the visual pigments beneath. Enough to outperform the Mantis Shrimp in the functionality, or close enough that it made no difference.

The color filters, like sunglasses, markedly reduce the level of light that reaches the visual pigments, which explained why I was not so disconcerted with staring at the sun. It did no damage.

Polarized light is probably most famous to Humans for being the thing we use sunglasses to blot out, and the thing that makes the new better 3-D theater stuff possible. Basically, light waves normally just sort of vibrate at random, but polarized light waves only go in one direction. Light can also be circularly polarized, spinning around like a drill on its way to your eyeballs. Humans can see it because we've developed advanced technology that allows us to investigate the phenomenon, plus the Mantis Shrimp because they are awesome.

And to keep this all in perspective, visual processing seems to be done within the mechanism of the vision system itself before sending that information on in a parallel manner from multiple retinal data streams to different parts of my brain in order to reduce the time required for analysis.

Past attempts at multi-sensor fusion in Earth's warriors with Heads Up Displays and in online games have met with limited success because of the limited processing power of Homo Sapiens, and the rigidity of non-sentient data processing systems for building security systems. With my advanced brain, nervous system, new eyes and the wormhole cameras working together, I can meld all the sensor feeds into an all-inclusive, almost god-like unified perspective of my environment. I can send worm-cam viewpoints through walls and look around corners, even see the back of my own head.

If an enemy tries to attack me with a long-ranged weapons system, I will have identified the enemy's weaponry before they have a chance to use them. Indeed, the awareness I have achieved of my surroundings enabled me to identify potential enemies and have multiple responses in place before the enemy is even aware that he is already in battle against me.

So there was that.

End of vision system explanation.

I put my hand on my stomach and found that I was still kind of fat. I didn't hurt anymore, anywhere. My new improved self was created in my own image, derived from many secret desires and holding the ideals that the Human race perceived as good. I would still be superior to any natural hominid in terms of raw computational power, in the ability to multitask, but I would still be nominally Human.

Okay so far?

Now for the book.

I opened it up and it was just like a tablet. Except the cover was reabsorbed back into the thing through some kind of nanomachine work of wonder. It took a moment to work out the mechanism that must have been developed to create such a thing. Boy I'm smart.

No doubt about it, I was holding a real thing from some alternate universe's future library. It even said "Property of Bayville Plutonian Library, City of Catalyst, Mars, 2456." I bet it could look like anything. Some kind of default mode probably.

A few checks didn't reveal any kind of message or whatever. I was able to synch up my brain implant with the device and run some checks, and boy howdy, nothing is better than the internet than an internet without government oversite!

There were all kinds of references to stuff from the future that hadn't happened yet. Plus since this baby was from the future I wouldn't have to wait for all my favorite authors to publish their books now. Bonus!

It even has historical examples of cyber warfare on file.

And I have a brain implant.

You know, I think I'll keep some of those filters on for now.

I got up, stood up, and stretched. Feeling how the new body worked. I was getting a bit hungry and had a case of cotton mouth and other than that everything was pretty good. I was dressed in my good work boots with oil resistance, slick resistance, stain resistance, electrical resistance, water resistance, steel toe super construction boots. Funny, considering I'd thrown those away last week and these looked brand new with about two weeks' worth of "worn in" in them. Cargo jeans and belt, with Harley Davidson wallet with all my credentials and cards and cash, Leatherman tool on the belt with cell phone on the other side. Blue shirt, exercise watch on the right wrist, and my construction helmet – orange.

Why?

Well not having a hat in this desert would be kind of dumb. And it had a built-in sweat band.

I looked to the left and considered my Xeno-Commander. You know, I'd only been playing the games for a few months and this looked like a good time to take a look into the backstory on the things . . . .

. . . . only to find that I had nothing. Every mention of Uber Entertainment had been scrubbed, sanitized like the information from a spy novel. I couldn't look up who came up with the different games or the fan fiction because it wasn't there anymore.

Okay, that was one resource I was counting on I wouldn't have. Fine then. For all I knew Commander Drich was on the other end of this thing. Or maybe someone else had designed it as his new body. Or maybe it was an experimental. Or maybe ROB swiped someone else's stuff. Or any one of a thousand other weird things.

Someone had set this up for me. I'll roll with it.

I give it a command to make it move. It picks up a leg and puts it down —

"BOOM – CRACK!"

I blink and suddenly I'm 200 feet away from the bolder I'm on top of and I need to reboot my brain to figure out what happened.

Let's see, robot makes a step and makes a "Thump!" just like in the game and the huge ass bolder we're perched upon cracks in half and the pieces go flying everywhere and I'm moving so fast that I can't even clock my own reaction time because my new brain can't keep up . . . .

That's ridiculously fast.

I run the math and that's, like, fast enough to write my name on a passing bullet while it travels through the air.

That's very, very fast.

Also the boulder is about the size of Cochegan Rock, the largest free-standing boulder on the eastern seaboard, which is about 54 feet long, 50 feet high, 58 feet wide and weighed 7,000 tons. For all you nature lovers out there.

Having your brain hooked to the internet is awesome!

The Xeno-Commander cracked it in half just by moving and then it had fallen down that crack and pushed the pieces of the boulder aside by its sheer weight and mass. At the same time I'd climbed down a deadly moving landscape at a speed that the fastest moving animals on earth would be jealous of.

Okay, I was ratcheting my upgrades up about five hundred years, giving myself decent combat routines and putting myself somewhere in the Battle Angel Alita Universe in terms of technological superiority. Because that little bit of "Oh, shit no!" just unlocked my super powers.

Which I'd forgotten about.

Because I have memory problems.

Also, watching that boulder break apart was pretty damn cool.

This particular grab bag was called "Micro Materials Manipulation." By use of some kind of extra-sensory abilities I could shrink my world view down to a single cell and track the individual blood cells circulating through my body. Not all at once. It kind of reminded me of one of those shrinking movies where the guys go inside another human's body and explores the place. My favorite is Inner Space with Steven Spielberg. According to my fractured memories I'd spent the better part of a week making some of the nanomachine technology inside my body, moving them around with something like telekinesis, putting them together to make something workable, reverse engineering the technology (?), improving my body and doing a whole bunch of other stuff while making lots of references to the Internet Book.

Everyone who even has an inkling about science fiction has heard of nanomachines. They can be fast, smart, dumb, cool, were all-round scary and were the holy Rosetta stone to some pretty advanced technology. Mine were no different. I now had the ability to Read and Write in the language people call DNA.

My newly built body has special chemical receptors and manipulators in the hands that can isolate and read DNA and RNA very rapidly. The brain now has a special pattern-recognition section devoted to decoding the information received and reconstructing the implications of that coding for the organism from which it comes. Like online genetic modeling. That what's called Reading. It's really no more difficult than the pattern recognition done by our eyes.

The other is more complex. If you know how an organism goes together, you can figure out ways to take it apart and put it back together, give it different abilities, new purposes. The manipulators in my hands can produce DNA, RNA or retroviruses that can alter the genetics of an individual or produce a new organism or nanomachine with the desired characteristics. It's a little harder than Reading and takes more training and concentration, but it works the same way.

The process of Writing out the nanomachines and the retroviruses that modified my genetic code and altered the makeup of my brain, installing receptors, modifiers, never paths, and creating new brain tissues was quite intense and rife with danger. I could understand why I did it. Nanomachine technology works fast. Like, a few dozen generations a second. My power was quite something but now I had some serious tools. Now that my transformation was complete I had a guaranteed method of survival.

The memory loss wasn't that great.

The bones, for instance, had been replaced with a new material that has no name but which I'll just call Bone Armor Mark 01, that was made to correct for several defects. I hadn't found it online but created it myself after coming to several conclusions. The new eyes were all based on information I'd found on the human eye, cybernetics, mantis shrimp, and new super cameras. The rest was a natural outgrowth of "Once you have the technology, you can do this, this and that."

Also includes combat routines hard-wired into my new cyber-brain.

I looked over at the broken rock I'd fallen asleep on and watched as the Xeno-Commander effortlessly shoved aside a slab of rock the size of my house and walked over to me. This time it was generating gravity and inertial fields that lessened impacts and making good use of focused electromagnetic fields to prevent its feet from sticking through the ground and sinking out of site. Any dirt or rock or debris that threatened to mar its perfect features were "eaten" by the body.

The Xeno-Commander was new. It wasn't there when I put myself to sleep when I upgraded my brain.

Let me back up and re-explain some stuff.

One – I'm a Self-Insert.

Two – I have memory problems and I've actually been in this desert for eight days now.

Three – I have a Shard from the WORM Universe that gives me a whole rainbow of extra mental abilities that make me seem like a psychic blacksmith with fine-control microscopic telekinesis with extra sensory perceptions, including but not limited to some decent Thinker and Tinker powers which include tech-trees with chemistry, biology, and machinery that allow me to manipulate the nanoscopic world so long as it exists inside my body or at least an inch away from my skin.

Four – My ROB had gifted me with some nanomachines to start off with from five or six different universes, I think – there were at least twenty different types and not all of them had been created by human beings. All of them were broken, 334 pieces in total, and I didn't have all the parts. So I had to make my own.

This allowed me to turn myself into a high-grade cyborg in a very short time and invent a microscopic wormhole camera system that I then wired into my nervous system.

This seemed to put me on level with the Commanders from the Supreme Commanders games. The Commander was so damn small, but I could operate it by remote control.

Decently experimental.

I was remembering a lot more random shit, mostly about how damn hungry I'd been after a week in the desert without food and water. Only my power had kept me from pissing and shitting and sweating away my body's only resources and dying from exposure on a planet with a 30 hour day.

(8 days times a 30 hour day is 240 hours or 10 days for you math-illiterate types that need a calculator.)

Then there was the sun – oh god the SUN!

For the first time today I consciously noticed RA blazing away in the sky. How hot was it? A quick check with my watch, my new in-built sensors and the Commander, made me want to cry. No, it wasn't a hundred degrees out — it was a muggy, airless one hundred-twenty-seven damned degrees and I could hardly breathe . . . . !

Fixing that right now.

Coping with the temperature was not a complex problem. First, I increased my pigmentation and did damage control on my severely burnt skin; the resulting skin tone rivaled that of the darkest gentleman from Africa and cut down on absorbed radiation. Then I turned my pain receptors back on since I was no longer suffering and looking like an over-exposure victim for the advertisement of Sunblock 9000. Next I transferred all surviving fat deposits – still kind of fat but not as much anymore – to locations deep inside my torso to reduce heat retention. Then I improved my heat-dispensation capacity of my skin and lungs by increasing the blood flow to and through them.

Fifteen minutes later I was finished. The adjustments were quick and by the time I was done the weather – to my perception anyway – had improved remarkably. The pleasant warmth of sunlight offset by a refreshingly cool breeze. I felt like taking on the world.

Unfortunately, it appeared that I might have to. From my second-hand knowledge it appears that I've been dumped onto an alien world of some sort. There was only one plant in the area and it was definitely alien in origin.

I sent the Commander over to take a look, it thumped, thumped, thumped over – honestly, how can it be heavy? A solid block of lead of the same size wasn't that heavy! – proving that I was indeed smarter than the average bear. The tightly wound spiral of red plant fibers not only looked like a band saw that someone had tightened into a clock spring, it had a proximity sensor with a hair trigger that allowed it to uncoil and slash at anything that came near it. The Xeno-Commander was hardly inconvenience and had no trouble at all clipping off a sample and bringing it back to me.

An examination of the thumb-nail sized portion with the nanotech in my fingers revealed that it was very sharp, poisonous, over 5,000 years old, reproduced by setting itself on fire so that hydrogen filled sacs of itself could be burned and cast floating seeds into the wind.

I used the knowledge to give myself some ruby Red claws with poisonous secretions while also making adjustments here and there to the rest of my biology.

I was good to go. But I was also down the road a ways towards starvation. Even minor repairs and alterations involved the accelerated divisioning of millions of cells and each and every one of them were clamoring for nourishment. This could be offset by swallowing a few rock chips and using my nanites and that seems to be mostly what I was doing. Of course I was pretty hungry when this whole thing started so I was pretty glad right now that I'd been such a fat tub of lard.

A situation which wouldn't last long. I wanted a five star meal and I need to get out of here!

Accessing the Xeno-Commander, or maybe I should call it Remote Controlled Alien Command Unit, or ACXCU – no, that's a terrible name – I directed the Xeno-Commander to reclaim the boulder.

The next minute was a lesson in bullshit progenitor technologies as hard light pressor beams sprang from an Einstein-Rosen bridge to the left of its chest and covered the rock with red nanomachines. A tractor beam pulling in the resulting slurry into another wormhole to the right of its chest made the "Mass Storage" tally count go upwards slightly. Soon there was nothing left but sand but I had it keep going anyway.

And going.

And going.

And going.

This made quite a hole.

So now we had enough materials to make a mass extractor, power generator, energy storage unit and metal storage unit. Ten minutes for each. Then a Tier 1 Air Factory to fill the hole . . . and wow is that impressive up close and personal. I mean I'm talking about stuff that's the size of an entire house here and it just goes up and up and up!

Colors are mainly poisonous orange with highlights of blood red, by the way.

The first fabricator aircraft comes off the factory . . . and wait a minute!

The fuck?

Okay, we have a problem!

The fabricator aircraft is about the size of a model aircraft. Like the kind you put together with a few thousand bucks, fueled with special gas, then launch off a pad the size of your driveway and fly in the air on remote control. Its ten feet wide. It's hobby sized.

Of course the Air Factory is only about the size of a one story house and the platform is about six feet above my head.

This requires further investigation!

I put the Xeno-Commander on "Autonomous Mode," and told it to build one of each type of factory and make the best of it and watch what happens.

It went to town like a sub-commander.

An hour later I had the Vehicle Factory, Bot Factory, and Orbital Launcher all in a row. They were each spitting out fabrication units and nothing else. I'm clicking on the other units I see in my heads up display I had access to when I was using the Xeno-Commander, which is the same as what you see on the computer for the most part, and nothing is happening.

Why?

I was getting error messages.

Another hour messing around and I finally, reluctantly, with tears, came to the conclusion that this Xeno-Commander was incomplete. I had economy and advanced economy units, I had factories, even orbital factories, all the fabrication units, advanced factories and advanced fabrication units. Nothing else. I had a fat database filled with scientific knowledge and data but no working designs.

I was missing all my Units!

I had nothing I could use as a workhorse or to crush my enemies under a wave of steel and progenitor alloys. My orbital launcher was a bit of an enigma. It was a big part of my economy, which was what this loadout was all about apparently. So I had my orbital fabrication bots to send up into the sky to build orbital factories and I also had the Astraeus unit to move my fabricator units from planet to planet. Once the orbital factory is up and running I also had access to the solar array for power to boost my economy and make more orbital fabricators and those fabricators could build stuff on a planet's surface or make a jig on a gas giant no problem. No orbital avenger or anchor, no death from above laser platform.

Good thing someone already rewired my brain for improved effectiveness otherwise I wouldn't have remembered the names for all this awesome shit.

I did have the halley for some reason, but I guess the ability to move asteroids and planets around to optimize resources counts somehow.

No defensive buildings, basic or advanced or otherwise. No orbital and deep space radar, radar or walls. No laser defense towers, galata turret, pelters, torpedo launcher, umbrellas, or anything like their more advanced versions. I did have teleporters for some reason but I was assuming that was a part of my transportation and needs to move my units around. I also had the catalyst, but without one of those death star planets it wasn't very useful to me right now except for reverse engineering.

I was missing all my weapons!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

THIS WILL NOT STAND!

I'm a Space Battler. And if there was a way to turn something as mundane as illegal porn into a weapon, I can fuck it up and make it infinitely more effective!

So!

I handed the Internet Book to the Xeno Commander and told it to learn all that was learnable.

Something like a cable excreted itself from one of its arms and touched the book and it absorbed the whole unit into its body.

Took one second.

Then suddenly it had another tech base and a whole smorgasbord of optional weapons designs to work with including all the experimental models from Lockheed and Martin and ass loads of data. A little back and forth between us playing twenty questions and I got it started on Project Bootstrap to start reverse engineering its own technologies. We were starting off with plain old earth tech and whatever nano technological wonders I could bring to the table. But it's a start!

Actually things might not be that bad. I didn't have CADS (Computer Assisted Designs) of any alien technology beyond the economy and transport units I needed to get my stuff moved around the solar system from Planetary Assault. But! I had a huge alien database filled with information and scientific knowledge. If I was right, and I'm pretty sure that I am, I would eventually be able to recreate all the technological goodies of not just Planetary Assault, but Supreme Commander as well.

After all, if a man knows that a tank is perfectly possible and he goes to a world that hasn't invented them yet, is given a garage, fifty guys to boss around, and a year he could come up with a tank. From that moment on its just a long road of redesigning and testing and upgrades. Simplified of course, but you get the idea.

Now, aircraft for the Air Factory.

I had lots of those from earth. Between hobbyists and the military and toys there were over a hundred thousand different kinds of aerial recon craft, unmanned or otherwise to play around with. There were two types, the ones that required a runway and the ones that used lots of thrust to lift itself off the ground, VTOL. Size varied. I had the Air Factory queued up to make a hundred of each kind, alternating, and to make two or three all at the same time on the platform if there was room enough available.

Some of them would need a runway, so I had the Air Factory produce the vertical takeoff and landing kind first while the fabrication aircraft formed a runway coming away from the Air Factory. Only when it was done then did it start making runway aircraft.

I needed a base. Okay, no problem. A few science fiction books to look up and I had the ideas I needed (Thank you James P. Hogan.) I gave the commander my ideas and it started to run simulations. Designing things clearly wasn't it's forte. But it could game the system better than I, and that was what was important.

Ground penetrating radar from the commander located three metal deposits next to an underground river. It was close by and I was thirsty and I decided not to wait around any longer. Away went fabricator vehicles, bots and aircraft. The things only had one speed, Go. I hitched a ride on one of the vehicle fabricators and held on for dear life as it went zooming over the landscape, arriving last as I made it give me as smooth a ride as possible.

Oh god! My ass . . .

PORT LANDING 001 was to be a sprawling complex. Mainly derived from purely human technology, the complex grew in stages as breakthroughs occurred and upgrades were applied and new inventions came about, all in a matter of three hours.

Despite near-constant re-design the result was a clean, efficient, functional layout, suitably modified where appropriate to take account of local conditions. Besides its industrial facilities, the complex included an air and space terminal distributed mainly across several nearby mountains which had their tops cut and leveled, which were interconnected by a network of tunnels that hollowed out those same mountains giving us plenty of mass and metal to work with.

Mostly an experiment, the capacity of the complex itself took account of long-range-demand forecasts and more than satisfied the current requirements of the primitive industries that were to be scattered around the general area. Its primary power source was a 50 thousand gigawatt, magnetically confined fusion system which combined various features and a smattering of alien tech, producing electricity very efficiently by blasting high-velocity, high-temperature, ionized plasma through a series of immense magnetohydrodynamic coils. In addition, the fast neutrons produced in copious amounts from this process were harnessed to breed more tritium fuel from lithium, to breed fissionable isotopes of uranium and plutonium from fertile elements obtained elsewhere in the same complex, and to "burn up" via nuclear transmutation the small amounts of radioactive wastes left over from the economy's fission component, the fuel cycle of which was fully closed and included complete reprocessing and recycling of reactor products.

The plasma emerged from this primary process with sufficient residual energy to provide high-quality heat for supplying a hydrogen-extraction plant, where water from underground was "cracked" thermally to yield bases for a whole range of liquid synthetic fuels, a primary-metals extraction and processing sub-complex, a chemical-manufacturing sub-complex, and a desalination plant which was not operational yet, but anticipated large-scale irrigation/factory farming projects several miles away so that I could someday get something to eat!

The metals-extraction sub-complex made use of the high fusion temperatures available on-site to reduce water, common rocks, all this damnable sand, and all forms of waste and debris to a plasma of highly charged elementary ions which were then separated cleanly and simply by magnetic techniques; it was like an industrial scale mass spectrometer. In the chemicals sub-complex a range of compounds such as fertilizers, plastics, oils, fuels, and feedstocks for an assortment of dependent industries were also formed primarily by recombining reactants from the plasma state under conditions in which the plasma radiation was tuned to peak in a narrow frequency band that favored the formation of desired molecules and optimized yields without an excess of unwanted by-products. The plasma method did away with most of the vats and distilling towers of older earth-based technologies and, moreover, enabled bulk reactions to proceed in seconds — without requiring catalysts to accelerate them.

Also built a Repair and Maintenance facility with hangers for servicing the machines during downtime and to apply the upgrades I'd be rolling out soonest.

Project Port Landing was mostly pure research; experiments were underway to begin the long process of cracking open the Power Generators tech trees and figuring out the methods by which power could be beamed through the air without the use of power lines to satellites, to be relayed around the planet and redirected to the surface wherever needed so I had something other than the normal plug-and-play options. Although very primitive compared to Tier 1 Power Generators I now had a means by which to upgrade to a fully functional Hydrocarbon Power Plant and a Mass Fabricator with which to convert energy into mass and metals.

Then I went inside my newly created concrete home next to my new spaceport to get out of the sun and into the shade. Also got rid of the hardhat I was wearing.

Building things was strange. I'd just picked the first large-scale airport I could find in the database and told the Xeno-Commander to modify it to suit our needs. In autonomous mode it was always one hundred percent perfect and efficient with its economy and the building of its forces. But it kept asking for permissions. It kept finding these little things to update the earth's technologies with information from the alien database. We hadn't even gotten started with applying alien technologies wholesale yet!

Well we were, but it was mostly in simulation. Confusing, I know. The computer running the commander was so much smarter than anything I'd ever worked with. But it was also kind of dumb.

Beyond a doubt, I was working with a very intelligent, competent, well programed servant-type AI.

But it wasn't creative.

It's kind of hard to describe but easy to understand.

If you give a group of people a project you'll get back what you asked for but you'll also find that they had developed solutions to problems you never considered and what they might come up with is something very different than what you had in mind and might be a whole lot better. It's the kind of creative feedback that can drive an engineer's manager up the wall.

Give the same project to the Xeno-Commander and it'll come back with something almost exactly like what you had in mind in the first place and nothing else. It was almost like magic, seeing your own thoughts so rationally developed to its most logical conclusions. But there are also none of those insights that people put into their work.

After I soon realized what was happening I spent most of my time checking on the work at the Port and finding small creative things that would improve the final product.

Thank you Worm Shard for making me an instant super-engineer!

But this was hardly efficient.

My first true effort at programming the alien machine was to get it to check its database for alternative or superior components and include them automatically. I called this the Automatic Upgrade Button. It was intended to be as simple to apply as it was when your computer needed an update. It was my job to come up with creative solutions to our problems or to create concepts. To this end everything I thought up was designed with simplicity and efficiency in mind, which was appropriate for use in disposable products for testing. Then the Xeno-Commander would take my ideas and hand them over to our immature group of Research and Development supercomputers for simulation, manufacturing and endless testing.

R&D was a new add-on. Each factory now had its own supercomputer to run simulations of its products and was allowed to create one new experimental unit to test to destruction after producing 12 regular units. Should any of the newer Experimental Units exceed parameters by 5% this was considered a success and the results loaded to the AI Engineering Upgrade Forum for use and abuse. The Xeno-Commander would give it a review and then give me options of where to go from there.

Options, they're everything.

Once a product was functional and given the "Okay" stamp of approval a new product would be produced that was non-expendable, hardened to survive the apocalypse and everything rebuilt for greater safety and efficiency and more potency. There were a lot of engineering firms that had a lot of programs for computers and procedures for doing this sort of thing and my new R&D was to use these whenever possible, or come up with new ones when they didn't fit. Safety was still important since I was still squishy, we also had to start including anti-terrorist, anti-sabotage, anti-cyber warfare, stealth and anti-stealth systems and ways to keep people from reverse engineering my technology into everything. There are many other techniques to be found in the textbooks.

I then ordered the Xeno-Commander to create a series of new AI programs along with the super-computers to house them in, created using both software from my human meat brain and from its own operating program. Based off some of the smartest characters in comics they were also color coordinated; Project Sci-Fi Think Tank was a go!

The first was Reed Richards, aka "Mr. Fantastic" – code named Blue. Respectively the smartest man in the world and master of all fields of science, particularly cosmic radiation and antimatter physics. Into this program was uploaded all our available knowledge of Engineering (Mechanical, Aerospace, and Electrical), Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Biology (Human & Alien). It is to this AI which I have given the job of advancing our knowledge of various fields such as space/time/extra-dimensional travel, biochemistry, robotics, computers, synthetic polymers, communications, mutations, transportation, holography, spectral analysis and so much more. If I wanted to brush up on my knowledge of other dimensions and the methods which to travel to and through then it was Computer Blue I was going to depend on.

Computer Blue's personal project, Theoretical Research and Applications Development.

Opposing Blue was Computer Green – Dr. Doom or "Victor Von Doom." The evil intellectual counterpart of Blue in regards to all fields of science with a special expertise in the fields of Energy Absorption/Manipulation, Robotics, Cybernetics, Genetics, Weapons Technology, Biochemistry and possible applications of Time Travel and, it is also to this computer which I will depend upon for the reverse engineering and possible development of any science fictional technologies I managed to get my hands on. Magic too.

Computer Green was in charge of Project Military Might.

Tony Stark aka "Iron Man" – code named Red. The master innovator of all my tech with an emphasis on being able to predict future problems and develop solutions before they even present themselves. General knowledge of technology as a jack-of-all-trades type with a bend towards Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, Nanomachine Technology and Computer Sciences. The Red Computer is the engineer and mechanic that can turn Computer Blue's ideas into reality.

Project 2000 Suits of Armor was given directional oversite to Computer Red, with a side project for developing the robots I needed for the Bots Factory.

To round out this sausage-fest is "The Engineer" aka Angela Spica, a member of Stormwatch in the Wildstorm Universe – code named Silver. Obsessed with Computer Science in all forms and equipped with all of our knowledge of Nanomachine Technologies it was to Computer Silver whom I would go to first to deal with problems and to help me develop microscopic machinery so that I might someday create Ad-hoc Weapons whole-cloth in combat, create Energy Force Fields and Electrical Storms, Control Devices like radio-operated drones, Rocket Engines, create Clones, spread Viruses (both biological and technological) to infect both machines and living creatures, grow new organs such as replacement lungs to cope with unfamiliar atmospheres, Cybernetics and many other feats which are to be bound only by my imagination and ingenuity.

Computer Silver's assignment was called Project Wunderkind.

Last but not least was the Bat Computer which ran off a computer model of Barbara Gordon aka Oracle – code named Black. Into this machine was programed everything there was to know about batman and his various sidekicks with the mind of Police Commissioner Gordon's daughter. Paranoia runs high with this one, this was the only good guy character I knew of off the top of my head without doing research who successfully hacked into Batman's communications devices. Computer Black's focus was on Technical Ingenuity, Cyber Warfare and was "Go-Go-Gadget Happy!" More of an engineer than a scientist, less an inventor and more of an innovator. With our human and alien database and alien technologies it was fairly easy for Computer Black to start cranking out newer versions of the bat belts, bat cars, bat copters, bat tanks, bat-this-n-that and all kinds of other things from the comic books.

Computer Black is in charge of Project Gismo-Tech.

Since they were feminine computers, I'd hoped they'd "get" the concept of babies and guarding the future of mankind, but mostly me.

All of these new super computers had only one job, to think and try to be creative and be the brains behind my R&D Initiative. From starting out with purely earth technology and a mixture of reverse engineered Alienware I think I did pretty good. They all had random number generators built into their computers and by taking in background cosmic radiation to tickle their programming they were capable of inducing "wild thoughts." All of them were fully capable machines and they took advantages of Earth's science fiction and most advanced scientific knowledge to self-program themselves so that they could find problems and work out their own solutions – at least three – to a problem before comparing results.

After seeing them design a drinks dispenser machine I decided to build two more super computers. One was Yellow and called "Jack-be-Quick" since it couldn't seem to focus on any problem for more than thirty seconds before moving onto something else. The other was Orange and called "Old Joe" since he was built around the concept of slow and steady wins the race, and would spend an entire day on a single problem, engineering and reengineering a thing out of all proportions to needs or reality.

Lastly I created an oversight program called MOM, which is short for Mission Operations Manager (I like Martian Mystery, sue me). Into her program I put all my feminine ideas and desires into and it was her job to make sure we didn't go too crazy and to clean up after ourselves, do the accounting and make sure all our chores were done in a timely fashion. She was in charge of the Lists. Whenever I thought of something I wanted to do she would put it on "The List" and schedule it into our now very busy day. It didn't have a dedicated system to run on but moved from system to system as it checks up on everyone.

Both the Red and Green Computers focused on manufacturing advanced military machines that were already available on Earth. Which was the best of 2016 is somewhat up for debate. The analysis we used is based on the on the combined score of stealthiness, armament, speed, range, maneuverability and technology. Pilot opinion was also considered during training. Analysis was based on specifications, available data and technical comparison.

Computer Red came up with the Super-Simulator and figured out how to program it. This works by putting various machines in the simulator that was accurate right down to the sub-microscopic level, simulating the Earth's solar system using Google earth and other information to reproduce various environments and time periods, and then by having the machines game themselves in total warfare for the worst possible future for an extended period of time while using information obtained to alter the designs slightly through a series of never-ending upgrades, with reviews about a hundred simulated years apart.

The result was the glorious, the stupendous, the insane, Diamond Leviathan.

Made out of this common and yet very useful material, the Diamond Leviathan could take on any five aircraft in the world including many fictional ones with every advantage given to the enemy and come out on top without breaking a sweat. Their closest reference in fiction are the Velocipods from The Incredibles Pixar movie. Someone actually managed to make a drone of the thing. Anyway, this bad boy had big fat silver tear-drop-shaped body with the wings, thrusters, and honest to god tentacles attached by a – I think I'll call it the Body Orbits system since it doesn't have a name – system which allows these peripherals to move all around the body in defiance of all normal concepts of construction while the body stayed straight and level with the ground. From the arms of the wings come thousands of tentacles which hold these flat panels about the size of a man's hand but with some very interesting characteristics. These wings and feather can then rearrange themselves while in flight to give the craft any kind of flying characteristic you could name and quite a number of impossible ones. It could perfectly mimic any aircraft in the world. It could put itself into a flat spin, fly backwards and sideways and any other ways you could think of!

The material it was made of was so mind-numbingly heat resistant that it could fly into the atmosphere at any insane angle you could calculate and come out just fine on the other side. It was similar to the Progenitor materials that allowed Commanders to walk through lava, yet it was also very light. This also made it damn near laser proof to all but the most bad-ass science-fiction energy weapons.

For armament the craft had a built-in fabricator to give it whatever it wanted. Mostly variations on missiles and bullets. It uses both magnetic forces and gravity to accelerate the payloads through a barrel with teleporters on each end causing it to accelerate indefinitely in a loop, making the barrel go from four feet long to one that is actually many miles in length and allowing its payload to be moved up to nearly any speed before deployment – depending on charging time of course. Then entire surface of the body is covered in panels which cover a deployment system for 212 teleporters which are then used to shoot missiles and bullets in any direction.

REMEMBER: WATT IS THE UNIT OF POWER

Instead of lasers we used the previous doctrine to outfit each aircraft with its own particle accelerator beam weapon, somewhat based off the anti ballistic missile defense system for the United States and its Strategic Defense Initiative, but mostly from the more powerful synchrotrons and cyclotrons used in nuclear research. Commonly referred in science fiction by a myriad names, phasers, particle accelerator guns, ion cannons, lightning rays, rayguns etc., this baby proved to be much powerful in the "Ha-Ha-Ha!" laugh-o-meter range. Ten petawatts of energy, and we could sustain it thanks to over-powered progenitor energy plant technologies. The trick was to use the teleporters to shorten a 300 foot long machine into a 3 foot long machine while actually achieving a result similar to a 3000 foot long machine, AND using gravity and magnetic forces to manipulate the energy in ways that no physical lens could duplicate to bounce the energy around and focus it into something we could use. Special tentacles with teleporter guns on the end of them are then used to orientate the beams in any direction. Since it was laser proof it could also shoot itself.

It has long been theorized that a pulsed particle beam emitted by such a weapon may contain 1 gigajoule of kinetic energy or more. The speed of a beam approaching that of light (299,792,458 m/s in a vacuum) in combination with the energy created by the weapon would negate any realistic means of defending a target against the beam. Target hardening through shielding or materials selection would be impractical or ineffective, especially if the beam could be maintained at full power and precisely focused on the target like I can.

Well, progenitor technologies are actually that awesome when it comes to armor. Hopefully whatever enemies I come round to fighting aren't that fortunate. Not bad for a kludge.

The guns, missiles and lasers were dialable systems. The lasers could be used as spotlights. The guns could shoot anything including pencils thanks to generous applications of gravitational forces. The missiles could shoot fireworks too. All three weapons represented the tried and true method of rock, paper, scissors where if one don't work, use the other. If you needed a fourth thing you can cobble the other three together to make something new. Like a rock covered in flaming paper with the blades of scissors sticking out of it, flying.

Just for shits and giggles I relaxed the control I had over my body and allowed myself to go to the bathroom so that one of the fabricators could scan the result and be able to replicate it on command. So now I had bullshit missiles to go with my bullshit technologies.

Frap boys need to up their games.

After the Leviathan the bomber was actually easier to design. It didn't need to do maneuvers or work in contested areas. It just needed to dominate the area like a flying fortress-type of mountain. In appearance it looked like a bell and used various gravitational forces to keep it aloft. So armor was a thing. Most of the ship is armor so it could survive at least three hits from weapon systems comparable to the Leviathan before a breech. It has three onboard factories dedicated to producing bombs and teleporter units with the last one going to repairs and modifications.

Force fields were something of an iffy concept at the moment since it was only in the last hour that the Xeno-Commander and the Think Tank Color Computers had managed to reverse engineer enough Progenitor tech and database to make that possible but we used them where we could. They were used in some manufacturing processes so we had that to work with. Coverage on the machine was sporadic. The only reason that aircraft don't have them is that the force field would prevent them from having a lifting body and any exhaust or energy put out by the engines and weapons would be trapped inside with the machine. They weren't permeable like in Star Trek. They were just walls. Someday we'll have that ability but not now. Not yet.

The teleporter units can move much faster and were more maneuverable than the Bell-Bomber but not faster than common military aircraft of 2016. (Remember all of these things are mostly experimental, speed upgrades will come later as I figure out what the fuck I'm doing.) They look like big rings that use force fields to both protect the ring and to create a lifting body along the outside edge so it works like a giant spinning fan with a hollow center. Once in position the Rings becomes a relay for the bomber to teleport all the ordinance it has so far manufactured and dump them over the target. Missiles and lasers and more Diamond Leviathans and troops and whatever could be transported through these flying disks as well; plus anything attempting to fly through the Rings when the teleporter is offline will be crushed into a singularity thanks to the gravitational lens it uses to move around.

For offense the Bell-Bomber uses our newly developed ray gun scaled up 1000X times to be a more powerful. The shots fired are then focused through the Rings it arrays around itself to bend and focus the beam onto targets.

A happy development is that a number of these rings can be moved around and used by other flying machines to accelerate them in a given direction for that added boost when we needed to deliver the mail – when you positively, absolutely, gotta have it there yesterday, YAY!

So long as I had enough of them the rings could form a highway with the rings on the bottom used to pick up anything (rocks, people, buildings, vehicles, water from the ocean, sand) and accelerate it one after another, ring by ring, until it got to orbit at speed.

Double YAY!

When it came to aerial reconnaissance drones we had something of a tie. Red and Green got into a snit fit over whose designs were better. Whereas Red's version of a Firefly looked period, Green had the drone copter which had a stable platform but less speed and looked like something from the terminator. The simulations pulled up lots of pros and cons for the both of them. Both could be equipped with weapons or other tools. Both could be used in space once the engines were replaced with antigravity drives. Both could be adapted to be used on mostly any planet except for the heaviest worlds.

Fact is that thanks to the teleporters just about anything could be made to fly if you could feed it enough power. Bricks included. So I pulled them back from all of that, drew a ball, put in an antigravity device that works well enough to keep it off the ground, then covered the exterior with Hailey rockets fed by Teleporters that are in turn fed by the Hydrocarbon plant I had the Xeno-Commander build.

That was "Speed – is-more-important-and-I-don't-give-a-fuck – Mode," by the way, I ain't that stupid. We could also use pressurized air, water, or napalm to squirt it around. Any kind of liquid or gas would do for propellant. It could also be used to distribute poison.

All should fear my flaming metal balls!

In "Stealth Mode" the teleporters created a hard vacuum by removing the air in the direction in which it was to travel. Since the total active area was about the size of the beach ball's surface area, this was plenty of power to pull my machine around at four gravities. Wouldn't work in space, but that's what the Hailey's are for.

First fire, now suck: the sexual innuendos just write themselves don't they?

I couldn't take full credit. The Air Ball was an ingenious invention of the author Philip Francis Nowlan, who wrote the story "BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY (Armageddon 2419 Ad; The Airlords Of Han) & THE PRINCE OF MARS RETURNS."

My "Flying Metal Balls Scouts of DOOM!" were each a sphere of metal three feet wide equipped with a primary lens four inches in diameter that could see anything, a nice self-destruct mechanism and had its own Tier 1 micro-factory, just like the aircraft, so could manufacture and deploy any kind of sensor you could imagine.

They looked like giant, peeping, flying, stealthy eyeballs.

Again, insert lots of sexual references here! Thank you!

Naturally, after realizing what I'd just created, I had the Xeno-Commander issue such orders that all of our aircraft and machines were to be upgraded so that teleporters could be used to remove the air in front of it so they could move that much faster.

So that was the Units for the Air Factory.

The Vehicle Factory was even simpler.

A thing I didn't say in detail before was size. Tier 1 factories only built things that were "toy size." The aircraft were the size of model airplanes and toy-sized aircraft. The biggest of which could be folded up and put into a space in your garage next to your car. Tier 2 factories could build complete tractor trailer trucks with cargo five at a time and ready to roll off the floor as soon as the last component had been put into place – or just about anything that could fit down the highway. Type 3 factories could build everything including the largest mobile construction machines on earth in the Guinness Book of World Records. The fabricator units were also scaled up the same way.

My Tier 1 tank was about the size of a pair of vending machines tipped on its side. Where before we once had a decent killing machine I'll now introduce you to Tiny Tank, a small yellow tank with an occasionally unfriendly attitude. The creation of this cute killing machine made me all kinds of warm and fuzzy. Its primary method of travel was to cover the ground with a sludge of nanomachines that it then sucked up as it passed by, refilling its hoppers with the materials it needed to make more nanomachines. This method allowed it to do anything with the ground it passed over. From laying mines to building traps or even roads.

It's body only had a passing resemblance to the character in the game. It had no head. Rail guns and x-ray lasers being what they are, to be seen is to die. The front is equipped with a specialized tunneling machine that turned everything in front of it into sand and was so quiet that all you could hear is the sand shifting around behind it as it proceeded into the earth at about the speed of a man who runs. A portion of this sand would be absorbed and turned into mass for storage with another potion converted into metal for metal storage. Weapons loadout started with an 80 mm railgun, plus whatever weapons that could be attached to the body in a modular fashion, which included everything.

So we had atomic weapons, lasers, railguns and magnetic launchers and every kind of energy weapon known to man and even explosives with odd special effects. There were land mines, artillery shells, and hand grenades too. Robotic arms could be attached where needed and there were even options to use the tanks as farming machinery.

My Tier 1 machines were small enough to enter most buildings for urban combat. Since they could be equipped with appendages I thought it would be good to arm them so I had some swords, staff weapons, and appropriately sized throwing stars built. For close-in work, you understand.

The largest tank ever produced by man weighed in at 69 tons, called the French Char, developed during WWI, used between 1921 and 1940. Only 10 were built. These days, of course, most of our dump trucks were bigger than that. So our medium grade tank was scaled up appropriately starting, again, with Earth's already plentiful weapons of war and applying upgrades. For instance; something as simple as replacing the armor and metals of the M1A2 SEP, successor to the M1A2 Abrams, cut the amount of maintenance needed on such vehicles down to almost nothing and would allow them to move and maneuver in ways that cannot be accomplished by their earthly counterparts because it would tear their bodies apart. Scaling the machines up was fully possible.

Those were two different machines for my Tier 2 Vehicle Factory by the way.

The next level up, produced by the Tier 3 Vehicle Factories, was fully deserving of the name BOLO. This baby mounted its own copy of the Schwere Gustav, biggest gun ever made, capable of firing 15 foot long shells, with six rail guns, four flame throwers, and built-in missile system that, just like the Diamond Leviathan, could be delivered using the teleporters built into its hull. The machine had a hopper where it could produce "Tiny" tiny tanks that it could custom design and send out as scouts to perform various tasks and as suicide bombers.

A decent tank that.

To control these tanks and give them direction we produced the CCV, or Command and Control Vehicle. It looked like a fat cylinder with wheels, had all the same capabilities of a tank but with half the weapons loadout and ten times the brains of any machine so far deployed. It was equipped with a communications vehicle, or CV, to go with it wherever it went.

Strap on some halley rockets fed with an unlimited supply of hydrogen through the teleporter system and a tank could fly as good as most 2016 Earth type aircraft and head for outer space on continuous thrust. Between that and the various attachments there was no real need to build other types of vehicles. We had the deigns but not the need.

Bots.

Even after some serious think-time in simulation we hadn't really created anything all that impressive or very large. The ASIMOV robot was a six foot tall humanoid with a greater range of motion and only 2.5 times the strength of a human being. The Johnny 5 type robot and its variations were actually more commonly used since its wheelbase gave it fewer points of failure, better stability and made it easier to drive around.

As construction continued round the clock drones that looked less and less human became more commonplace, a whole zoo in fact to cover lots of different specialized functions.

There was the robo-insect – a cylinder about six inches across and two feet long with two helicopter blades on each end. The main body had a number of jointed arms, probes, and a cluster of lenses that gave it that distinct insectile appearance. Hanging from the cylinder like a stinger was a universal toolbox containing a number of tightly packed gadgetry and tools and sensors ready to be deployed for any conceivable task.

Another drone, looking like a flying toaster with over a dozen slots arrayed on its "front," had dozens of sockets on the ends of recessed cables, was always ready to hook itself up to any machine for analysis.

Another drone, built similar to the air ball scout but smaller so it could get into tiny spaces, bristled with lenses of all types. It used gravity to move around and did not any other means.

Then there was the much improved USAF Beetle, an 80 ton tracked vehicle, shielded to deal with nuclear power. Fix an atomic rocket engine? Clean up spills of radioactivity? Rescue H-bomb victims? Tear off the doors to a burning wreck? That's what the Beetle is for. Biggest robot ever made and it was built back in the 1960s. The article I read about it impressed me so much that we had to make a modern version to handle our problems. This one of course didn't have anyone in it but other than the CCV and the Tier 3 BOLO it had the biggest computer of all our mobile forces. Because it could extend itself to five times its own height it also made it perfect for servicing any Transport Aircraft I want to produce, as well as doing maintenance on Tier 2 machines on up. We added two additional arms to the body so it could squirt out red nanomachine, reclaim matter, and fix just about anything as a support unit.

More and more, the vast majority of the machines coming off the assembly lines looked like some variation of Mobot. Not robot. The word was also coined back in the 1960s. These are teleoperated mobile robots, the descendants of which you've probably seen being operated by police men to disable bombs.

The majority of these machines had a small boxy trapezoid-like body like an upright suitcase that ran around on tracks, had at least 4 and sometimes twenty different arms, sometimes with cameras on the ends of arms, with hands that could be interchanged for tools.

Each bot had a micro-teleporter in it for fuel and power since their onboard batteries only had ten minutes of life in them – which I was beginning to think didn't operate the same way it did in the games but had no data available to figure out if this was true, which was really important since there was supposed to have been a war with extra-dimensional Xenos. They had no weapons of their own but since most were only seven feet tall at most and a lot of them had humanoid hands to use they could be geared up like any human and be used to drive and operate all our equipment and tools. Outfitting them was an ongoing project.

That was it.

I didn't feel the need to go all crazy at the moment building machinery I might need to scrap or redesign tomorrow. If it works and is not clearly broken, don't fix it.

We had plenty to do anyway. Scouts were gradually expanding all over the world looking at every little thing. A satellite design was in the works pending reviews so I'll finally have something I can produce when I hit the ARCDY button. Various fabricators were hard at work laying down mass extractors, metal extractors, building energy plants, energy storage, metal storage, mass storage and everything else needed for my economic needs. Soon I'll have radar, deep space radar, Tier 2 and 3 radars going up all over the place. The other technologies would come in time as they came off the drawing board to fill all the niches I was missing.

Until then I had an engineering project I wanted to do. It had been done in fictions and some people had even made proposals about such a system but it hadn't exactly been popular for some reason, even though I thought it was cool as fuck. Since I had the burrowing tank that I could use to snark (to snipe) at people anyway I thought I'd give it a shot.

I needed a way to get my things moved around the planet in a hurry, so I ordered the Xeno Commander to create what amounts to a giant subways system deep underground, planet-wide.

Thanks to my Tier 3 Factories and fabricator units I could build the biggest of the biggest machines produced on earth in 2016. Including the Bagger 293, the largest bucket wheel excavator produced at the time. It is 314.9 feet tall, 738.2 feet long, weighs 14,200 tons and is awesome. The wheel itself is over 70 feet in diameter with 18 buckets, each of which can hold over 15 cubic meters of material. If I wanted to have giant robots in the future and a way to move them around without some enemy seeing what I was doing, rather like in a few Japanese anime films, these were the dimensions I was going to build to.

I also took a moment to redesign the bucket wheel excavator so that it had four Tier 3 power generators and to give it a the biggest engineering unit, ever, and then let the Think Tank over-engineer the rest using Progenitor technologies that had so far been reverse engineered. This also turned the Bagger into a support unit for my T3 Bolos, just like the Beetle.

Twelve layers of tunnels, each 800 feet in diameter and lined with Progenitor armor for safety, with the ones dedicated exclusively for military transport starting about a mile down in the Earth/insert-planet's-name-here crust. They all have super-duper progenitor magnets in the roadbed to magnetically float the cars, trucks, and move the other vehicles I intended to build someday if they were ever needed. The top two layers exist only in the built-up areas to service my economy or where future facilities are planned.

The first is typically two hundred feet down and has a north or south road every other mile. The next is five hundred feet deeper, and has east and west roads, again every other mile. These two are connected at every intersection by saddle-shaped circular roads.

Stations and loading docks will be later built and incorporated into this grid as needed. The design speed for these upper layers of local roads is a hundred miles per hour. And yes, I had cars made to transport the Bagger 293 at that speed to all over the world. If I ever built me a Big O or an Evangelion type of robot I'll be able to get it where it's most needed quite easily.

The rest of the system covers the entire planet, and will soon be on every island more than five miles long.

Other than the top three, which are separated by a spacing of about half a mile in some places due to some geological problems, all the tunnels are evacuated of all air, and were designed to move machinery around at 300 miles an hour or more. Of course, each grid ties in with the grid above it. Where the roads cross tectonic plate boundaries, there are special flexible sections to bridge the gaps. All told, the system permits very rapid transportation from any point on the planet to any other point.

In addition to this is a communications system and superconducting power network. A factory that does nothing but produce nanites all day long provides thousands of gallons of microscopic workers which then digs its own tunnel system into the ground and is used to transport nanites throughout the planet, which in turn builds more nanomachine factories and power generators underground as the web expands throughout the world. They would also be responsible for tunnel maintenance and the construction of a planet-wide water and sewage system.

All of it is underground, as are a number of automatic factories that are to be installed in the future, mostly for whenever in the far future I could think up some reason to use them. Then it would be just a matter of scheduling the build time to build the factories to build the things that I'd need.

Surplus production never hurt anyone.

All in all it is the greatest engineering feat of my lifetime ever attempted. Once the Color Computers have finished simulating it and designing it, in about three days or so, construction can begin. It should be done in two months or so.

Now where is everybody?

I'm getting zip from radar and deep space radar.

Computer Blue is doing the interstellar cartography thing. Computer Green is designing some military equipment I can put up in space and is setting up my basic defense buildings and advanced defense buildings. Computer Red is still focusing on robots and powered armor and better toys for the house. Computer Silver has made some progress in nanomachine human enhancements and better software for my human/machine interface. Computer Black has made a Cleopatra 2525-type grappling tentacle-hook thingy. Nobody's seen anything that looked like a civilization or a bunch of ruins or anything other than the 189,751 different types of lifeforms on this ball.

Which is actually kind of low by the way. Most of them were microscopic in size.

Well I'd only explored an area about the size of Texas, no stone unturned and all of that.

What had we found so far?

Let's seeeeeeee…

The world rotated that way, so that meant that I was at the north pole. Well, close to the arctic circle anyway. My own continent the equivalent of Antarctica. Call the area where I woke up at Greenwich mean time. That means I've been awake and walking around for almost 5 earth hours.

As the Ball Scouts moved further south they started finding indications that this planet wasn't always like this. A bit of archeology and it was revealed that at some point in the past this solar system had two stars. Presumably with the one was very much smaller than the other. Or it might have been a large gas giant with delusions of grandeur. Anyway, something went wrong and it blew up. The telescopes that were constructed could see the scars on the other planets and with a lot of work and math you could figure out where they where and when it happened. So it went nova and destroyed just about all life on this planet. You could still see the debris the star/planet had pushed out in a sphere around it 3 million years later and here we are.

But there was plenty of life to be found. Evolution had found a way. I was finding a lot of caves where life had continued to flourish during the storm. Too many caves in fact. Big and deep, with water being pumped into them from deep underground. Where they artificial?

So now we were starting to see some ruins. Mostly ancient sewage and water systems that had survived deep underground to breed and shelter microscopic life forms until the damage from the star had passed to terraform the atmosphere all over again.

Computer Green finished the ARKYD and launched it.

Place looked like mars after a horrible terraforming accident. Not much water on this planet anymore. You could see where the oceans once were. Lots of ruins. The nova must have pushed most of the atmosphere into space before it was either reclaimed or regenerated. Everything is well preserved. There were also a lot of military structures that seems to have survived as well somehow. Pretty good building techniques. I don't know how they made that purple concrete but that's is one technology that I want for my own. Three million years is nothing to sniff at. Even Progenitor technologies weren't up for that kind of task without any nanites to repair everything. It is highly doubtful that in a span of three million years any of the commanders from the first wars would be around to go make trouble for anybody. But you never know.

There were two asteroids that orbited this planet at right angles to each other, 2 gas planets, an ice planet on the far side, a liquid rocky planet near the sun, an unusually large and expansive (according to the Progenitor database) asteroid belt, a few moons that were orbiting around each other like a complex atom and that was it. I'm assuming that the asteroids were once planets themselves that broke up and the rest were captured since then.

No radio waves. Nothing.

Maybe I should make a call?

From every radio transmitter, from every sonar and radar device, from every laser pointed straight up at the sky to any nearby planet or star, the machines overloaded their systems to send out a deep pulse of energy to whoever or whatever might be listening; as a result of these actions several flying creatures and fish died as the energy broadcast overloaded their primitive nervous systems where they were then eaten by bigger predators and other creatures too dumb to die.

I'd hidden myself behind a rock inside a telephone booth made of copper, it still made my hair stand on end. I then picked up the receiver the Xeno-Commander had just gotten done fabricating for me, totally-not forgetting all the ways I could have used the brain interface to do the same thing. "This is radio N-O-R-M, broadcasting to you on an extremely illegal emergency frequency. If there are any police officers in the area that want to arrest me, please do.

"The time is now 1422, and the temperature is 141 degrees in the shade, with a 98% chance of being very hot for the rest of today and tomorrow. Severe heat warnings have gone up and down the coast, with chances of class five and six heat waves striking this planet within the hour. I've started catching up on all the reading I've missed out while working, because I'm now unemployed. There's nothing in the fridge –"

That was about as far as I got when a young 20-something Nicole Sullivan in a suit of battle armor fell out of the sky. "THUD!"

...

"Um, Oops?"


	2. Arc 1 Chapter 2

First, I want to say that a Niccole Sullivan look-a-like is not the first person I would have picked to be stranded on some random alien planet. Especially not with me, here, or later.

There are people who actually WISH for that sort of thing to happen (to them or others) and I would have chosen one of them rather than her.

That said, how the fuck did she get past all the Uber-Omni-scanners?

She was right above me. She de-cloaked. She fell out of the sky. Every machine nearby that had a read on her relayed the information to all the other machines and they all aimed their guns and energy weapons at her. The Tier 1 drones converged on her fast and had her surrounded in moments.

The suit was still preventing in-depth scanning, somehow, even while it was clearly powered down. It also seemed to be regenerative in nature, automatically sealing up or repairing systems damaged during the crash using stored kinetic energy in a mechanical and chemical fashion until its electrical systems could be brought online, which means that in 112 second it will be fully repaired and operational once again.

I want that tech!

But it was clear that her leg was broken and there was no indication of built-in first-aid. From the images I was getting from her face she was also in immense pain (no dah!) sunburned, and suffering from dehydration.

Could I have found another Self-Insert character?

ROB, thou art a dick of immense size and ridden with disease.

I came around the rock and filtered my way through the rings of machines and got a good look at her.

Yup, she was hurting. Having a hard time breathing; broken ribs or punctured lung?

The suit was something else. Thanks to my access to a complete copy of our planet's internet from 2016 I now knew I was looking at a good replica of the Centurion Project's battle suit from the Kim Possible TV show. Let's see: According to various online sources the suit is constructed from a super-strong alloy containing cutting edge nano technology that, when dormant, looks like a bracelet and then covers the person wearing it in armor.

Check, it's a really cool thing.

The armor itself is highly durable, and takes no visible damage from handheld explosives or being buried under heavy debris. Furthermore, when it does sustain damage, a self-repairing system activates within seconds, like it never happened. Offensively, the armor wields two shoulder-mounted rapid-fire energy cannons (That I can see with my two eyes, right now! Thankfully depowered,) and two wrist-mounted non-lethal energy beams. It also enhances the strength of the wearer and contains a flight-capable rocket pack that deploys from and refolds into the back. In addition, the armor is semi-sentient and its systems are automated, so it continually responds to the wearer's state of mind in battle conditions. This means that no actual knowledge of the Centurion Project's weapons is necessary to wield it effectively.

The circuitry is controlled by a biometric parameter related to stress: the more stressed the person wearing the bracelet becomes, the faster they are covered from head to toe by the armor, and the more aggressive the armor becomes toward perceived threats.

Still want the armor!

It looked like someone had pulled a Fusion Monster Card, though.

The battle suit is largely white with red and orange highlights and has a chest shield, similar to the space ranger suit worn by the alternate Mira Nova from BLOSC in episode 22, The Buzz Lightyear Factor. Also, she has the fire sword from Drew Saturday.

What the F?

All this contemplating and learning barely takes two seconds. In the meantime a tall wall is put up around our subject, both energy based and not, with a door on one side and the sky open. This way she has a perceived way to leave and will not think about taking me hostage, I hope.

I'm going to go with the thinking, dealing with a wild animal here.

"Hello!" I yelled at her from a distance. "You appear to be injured! Can I be of assistance?" Always offer the hand of friendship first.

Gasping like she just ran a marathon and clearly in great distress the girl rolls over and does something that causes the metal surrounding her head to be absorbed back into the suit. That was unbelievably cool!

Also, her hair was outrageous!

I mean, literally outrageous. Like she doesn't have the time to take care of it. She has a headband so altogether it gives her a "Space Warrior Babe of the Future" look. But the coloring was definitely the result of a character fusion. It was a stylish mix of black hair that goes down to the middle of the back with a tiger stripes of platinum blond, kind of big and poufy. Not a dye job. It went all the way down to her roots. Her complexion was severely sunburnt, but her lips and eyebrows were solid black.

"I (huff) surrender!" she says. "Help me – (gasp!) please . . . ."

Then she collapses and doesn't move much.

The suit, in a cool clanking soundtrack, slowly collapses in on itself leaving behind nothing but a large gauntlet around her right arm. The shard inside me goes "Squee!" with the desire to tinker. Is suppressed successfully.

The sword is still attached to her left hip with the fanny pack attached to her right upper leg. Her clothes are a fusion of Kim Possible's second mission outfit and Shego's outfit. Except for the hair she looks like KIGO2 from Deviantart.

The program Mom (Mission Operations Manager) informed me that the hospital will be done being constructed by the time we get there. New lists of things to do are also generated.

One of the Tiny Tanks rolls up and is sprayed down by fabricators so it has a nice box attached to its upper surface, duplicating in every way a million dollar ambulance. Another stream of red nanomachines in the meantime has already created the stretcher. An air ball scout released a cloud of antithetic over the girl and puts her to deep sleep.

Using machine precision the robots use their manipulators to lift her off the ground supporting every body part and get her into the stretcher and strap her down and load her into the improvised ambulance. I get inside with them. The doors close and we take off.

A medical droid with a woman's body hangs from the ceiling with twelve limbs. Inspired by THIS. Using lasers, scalpels, cutters and fingers it quickly removes parts of the mysterious woman's clothing to get at the patient. These materials are analyzed along with the tissue samples. I put my hand on her stomach to allow access to her tissues through my nanomachine technology and WORM shard superpower.

The girl, approximately 21 years of age, is a construct like myself. We have the same age but their are no scars from living or abnormalities from unregulated growth spurts. She on the other hand has a triple DNA strand, which I find fascinating. Two parts human, one part I'm guessing to be Tangean. Stripping out the human DNA and recreating the original strand I find myself completely understanding the Tangean ability to ghost through solid matter. Unlike the ones from the show however all indications are present that she also has the ability to create mind pulses like the Tangean Grounders. Together it gives reason why she has a slightly longer neck than found on most humans, unusual brain structure, and pointy ears.

By the time we get to the hospital (clinic more likely) I found myself taking on the role of doctor since I was the only one around capable of performing surgery without opening her body up to get at the bones and ruptured organs. My powers made me uniquely qualified. In moments upon our arrival we were relocated to a large circular operating room whose walls were covered with sensors of every kind and cameras. Data gained from the operation is invaluable.

It also didn't take long, thanks to my technology and with a bit of help from Computer Silver, to get her hydrated and fed. This was done by having me ingest some alien plant matter that the machines brought and pre-pulverized in a blender, stripping out the poisons and other things humans normally can't consume, then throwing up and forcing the result into her stomach with the help of an intravenous tube inserted through her mouth. The tube itself is a mechanical arm that avoided the sensitive areas of her throat on the way to her stomach so she didn't gag on it or have any unpleasantness happen while it was being put in and taken out. My nanomachines and tailored organisms take care of the rest from there.

By the time I was done she was sleeping the sleep of one of the exhausted.

In the meantime the rest of the Think Tank were positively oohing and ahhing over the battle suit. The armor seems the best of both fictional words.

There was even a manual. That'll help, as soon as I translate it from Tangean.

The Battle Suit was a smooth blending of both universes technology. Though cloth-like in texture except for the chest plates and guards protecting the joints when fully deployed, the alien space armor is strong enough to survive any blast short of a supernova (Progenitor tested, superhero approved). Wings from the Space Ranger suit were added to the literal rocket pack for additional stability with thrusters on the ends for increased speed and maneuverability. It even has a hyper-sleep function and emergency rescue beacon. The suit itself can also magnetize in order to remain securely attached to a fragment of metal or the hull of a ship.

One difference here is that the communicator has been relocated to the right forearm, with the ability to contact other suits as far away as the next solar system.

The suit contains two crystallic fusion crystals, green and faceted in appearance, powerful, explosive and self-regenerating. Provided you don't use it too much the crystal will grow back to its original size. Omni-sensors indicate that its properties are only possible because it exists in five other dimensions than the ones we can see and uses extra-dimensional forces to achieve observed results in defiance of known physical laws. So it has a charging time. However if you give it plenty of energy of the right type while placed under extreme pressure in seawater it will grow.

Computer Blue is happy.

Plans were already underway for new power generators and aquatic fusion crystal farms. Time until completion: 1 hour. Time until first crystals could be harvested . . . . . . 30 days, damn it!

There was a powerful wrist laser weapon in each arm of the suit small enough to fit on your keychain. It can be set to either weld holes and cracks, stun an enemy or blast it out the sky. Space Rangers get all the best toys. The energy cannons on the shoulders and the non-lethal pulsar blasters mounted in the wrist are all so very, very valuable to our weapons development programs. Yoink!

A little R&D time and weapons upgrades all around!

Plans were made to start developing other Star Command weapons. Notably the smaller laser which is supposed to be a very small gun that is incredibly powerful and very portable; the Standard laser cannon, which emits an orange charge so it's more powerful; the Heavy duty laser cannon, which is also orange but has a larger beam diameter.

The suit's semi-sentient systems are very advanced compared to what was available in 2016, at least 300 years ahead of any AI research being done at that time. Sentient robots were a big thing in the Buzz Lightyear universe. Nothing that my world couldn't have reverse engineered, of course, but it was nice to have now. It was, in fact, advanced enough that I felt it worth it to temporarily shut down all my computer and AI systems and replace them with the new OS.

None of this even casts a shadow on the magnificence of the Xeno-Commander which is how I know none of my machines are going to go all Skynet on me. "Jees!" What a dumb movie that was. Skynet would have been better off waiting a few years and then by releasing a plague to wipe out all life on earth. I know those diseases exist because they were in the Big Internet Book of 2016. There were even workbooks, like the kind you hand out to students, which will guide you to how to make them. The Xeno-Commander could just come one over and crush my head first. Actually I don't think he was programmed at all. However it was done it didn't make any sense from my primitive viewpoint. The important thing is that it works and he isn't going to kill me.

Computer Red loved the suit. It allowed him to complete the Mark 00 way ahead of schedule and produce something I could wear in less than an hour. All of that stuffed into a tiny armband-computer thing. It'll enhance my already natural Transhuman abilities, allowing me to move even faster and jump higher than ever before.

There is also a variable shield generator which creates a circular clear bubble around the user which can also be specifically tuned to allow objects in or out. The shields can also be used to knock nearby individuals away from the wearer by activating it as they are nearby.

So now we had a schedule in place to develop and upgrade our sheilds technology. Moving right along.

The suit also has an archaic wrist grappling hook, which Computer Black replaced with the Cleopatra 2525 grappler which requires no hook and is more like Spiderman's webs in that it can attach itself to any surface, can be thinned, thickened, elastic, and fully retractable. Computer Black was also very interested in the Kimmunicator found on the girl's wrist when she unarmored, which was somehow more advanced than any private communications device on record, even the ones secretly developed by the government and militaries. It is powered by a trilithium power cell, an advanced super-battery that can carry enough charge to power much larger devices. Even a portal to another dimension. This battery will last almost four years before needing to be replaced, even under extreme abuse. Outside of Progenitor technologies this is the most powerful battery in our arsenal.

Power generator upgrades for the smaller machines were a must.

The suit also has a stealth mode that allows for full invisibility with color changing options. Nothing quite like what the Progenitor database is enabling us to give our units in terms of stealth. If all my tech had full access to full Progenitor capabilities, rather than this miss-mash of upgraded human machines, I doubt she could have gotten anywhere near us. But progress was progress. It shouldn't take long to adapt and incorporate.

Not long at all.

With this battle suit technology I have all my Defensive Buildings back. I have my Catapults, Galata Turret, Holkins, Jellyfish mines, Laser Towers of all kinds, Nuclear Missiles Launchers – well I already have those but better ones now – better Orbital and Deepspace Radar, Pelters, plus the Umbrella, Laser Weapon Platforms and Anchors for space defenses were now a real thing.

But why?

That was the real question here. Why take away my most dangerous tech and all my weapons only to give me an entirely new set? These things are all about going to new worlds in different Alternative Universes and acquiring the technologies there. Nothing about having companions and having the stuff come to you.

Who was the women? Why was she a fusion character? Self-Insert, mad scientists creation, clone, all of the above?

I'll say it again, someone is fucking with me.

?

Well I suppose it didn't matter. She was completely in my power. I could do just about anything with her. The only thing I couldn't account for were her other abilities. While she was asleep her "aura" shifted between green, blue, teal, red and purple. The teal color obviously came from her Tangean heritage. Green came from Shego, so did that meant she also had the abilities of the other members of Team Go?

What was this energy?

So many questions.

Didn't really have a lot of answers. "A Wizard Did It," seems a bit too standard.

Unconsciously, I found myself looking at the conglomeration of Disney characters occupying the next room as she slept rather than working, wondering what I should do.

The woman should be up in an hour. I'll have her moved into a larger room with a proper bed. Dresser, nightstand, vanity mirror, bathroom, sheets, socks, pajamas, slippers, perfumes. She might not like having the lights on when she wakes up. So I put a force field generator into place and programed it to cover her half of the bed with a deep blue tint to filter out certain frequencies of light. I call it my Dark Light generator. All set.

Then all I had to do was wait.

In the meantime I got to go over more details of the suit and figure more stuff out. This reverse engineering thing is fun. I can see why the others all wax poetically about it so much.


	3. Arc 1 Chapter 3

When she woke up she was wide alert. I mean like ten cups of coffee, she was off like a rocket. She immediately went for her sword, not finding it, then the other weapons on her person which were not there, all in about a third of a second. Then she saw me sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed.

"Eeeeeeeeeep!" scuttling backwards she hit her head on the backboard. "Ow! (hiss) That hurts."

"Hello there. I'm Norman. Can you tell me what's your name?"

"Got that before when you screamed it into the sky," she groaned as she held onto her head. "You've got some really freaky eyes."

"Thank you?"

"Why am I not dead? Or burned?"

"I used my special powers, mad doctoring skills, and nanomachine technology to put you back together. You feel okay?"

"Actually," she touched her face then took the mirror I handed to her. "Thankyou. I feel pretty good, but something's missing." She blinked, then held the collar of her jammies away from her and looked down her shirt. "Why am I smaller than before?"

Coughing! "I used nanomachines to repair your body, so they … erm … we cannibalized some of your excess mass to fix it."

"Must have been some injuries." She quirked an eye spock style.

"You have no idea." Smiling with embarrassment.

"Enlighten me." She smiled her own dangerous smile, all in the eyes, which promised pain with much applications of fist.

Raising hands in forgiveness. "Just about every bone in your body had severe fractures, including the spine, particularly the thoracolumbar junction; only the left leg and the ankle joint was broken. Which is a tribute to whoever made that suit of battle armor that it protected you as it did even in its unpowered state. The left kidney was pulped and left lung had collapse. Full body bruising throughout, plus pulled muscles and numerous ruptured blood vessels. You also had a traumatic brain injury and were bleeding on the inside. Also cracked teeth. Had I not used nanomachines you would have died. If you had survived as anything other than a vegetable you'd have been crippled for life."

"Thanks?" she blinked. "No, seriously, thank you. But, um, do you have anything to eat?" her stomach growled.

I nodded. A moment later a square robot on some tall wheels comes in with a porcelain bowl and spoon with a rather unappetizing mess of purple and red chunks in watery fluids. The machine sets the tray down in front of her and retreats to the wall at the back near a charging station. The lady picks up the spoon and scoops up a glob of the stuff.

I will not describe the smell.

"What is this?"

"Plant and animal matter collected from the countryside, stripped of its poisons and with everything a human needs to survive and nothing else."

She grimaces. "Tastes like three month old socks." She swallows it and keeps eating.

"Had a varied life, have we?" I pointedly asked. I hoped that she'd open up a bit.

"You know that Secret Saturday's show with the mom Drew Saturday?"

"Yes?"

"Well, she and her family have gone all over the world and eaten some strange things, in the show that is. And this stuff," she tapped at the bowl. "This isn't the worst of it."

"Wow."

"Yeah, I know, right?" she kept eating. "You can put them back right?"

"What?"

She stopped eating, cocked her head to the right and gave me a long look. "The boobs, dumbass."

"Oh! Right . . . sure. Whatever you like."

"Good." She nodded, as if that settled everything. She finished eating. "Can I have some more?"

I summon the servant-bot back and have it fabricate some more disgusting mush.

"So, you're a self-insert character too?"

She takes the bowl with both hands and puts it in front of her. The servant-bot also makes a few glasses of water, which she also takes with a straw.

"Yup," popping the Ps.

"So, what should I call you then? Shego, Mrs. Saturday, or Ranger Mira Nova?"

Rubbing at the backside of her head with one hand, "Yeah, not so crazy on the whole naming thing yet. It gives me a serious headache and it hurts," she takes a moment to kick her legs up and down throwing the sheet around while gritting her teeth as her blood vessels throb, but the attack soon passes, "Ow. . . (sigh.) I've got three different lives rolling around in there on top of my own and each and every one of them is screaming at me."

I frown. "Well it's not from me. Want an aspirin?"

(sighs) "I'd love an aspirin. But I don't think it will help." She shook her head. The bot fabricated some aspirin for her anyway.

Simple chemicals and pharmaceuticals I can do. An orange? Forget about it.

I give her a minute to let her eat before I continue questioning her. "So why were you hovering around spying on me?"

"Hel-lo!? Dying of thirst and hunger here!" she berates me. "The stupid suit didn't have anything but light rations. Without the air conditioning I'd have totally died. Plus, you were kind of scary with your whole "robot army" thing," makes air quotes. "Anyway, just to let you know, if you touch me in any way inappropriate other than doctor-patient like, I know seventeen different ways to break your hand and tear your arm off. I know you'll regenerate. Got it, bud?" she said with such a tone that sent shivers down my spine.

All while admonishing a hand as a claw, which immediately did the green-glowing-on-fire trick. The fire rapidly traveled up her arm, covered her whole body in a glowing green glow, set everything on fire, vaporized the pajamas and parts of the bed.

It was really hot.

"Oh no, I'm on fire!" she yelled in panic, slapping herself and trying to put it out while the dishes went flying.

Then the fabricators in the ceiling covered her in a ton of foam. The fire went out.

"You're also naked," I say, not at all looking away.

She was covered in suds so I couldn't see much. But she curled up on the remains of the bed with her feet tucked in close to her butt and her knees folded up against her chest while she was covering herself with her hands.

"Oh no! Don't look at me! It's embarrassing. Ah . . . I mean, can I have some clothes here?"

I pointed a thumb back over my shoulder. "Bathroom's that way."

"Oh god!" she yelled.

Hands covering her girly bits and still covered in suds she ran that way and slammed the door behind her.

Things were going good so far.

It's a good thing all my cameras can take 2 trillion pictures a second, because I was going to be admiring those for a looooong time.

"Get me some clothes!"

I gave her back her mission clothes. After a quick shower. Funny thing about those garments.

She came walking out tugging at the outfit. She checked herself out in the mirror and made a few adjustments. Mostly in the bra because it didn't fit her anymore like it should. She turned towards me, cocked a hip and making a pose which I think she did unconsciously. "Got a thing for Kim Possible cosplay?"

"Those were the clothes you were wearing."

Eyebrow lift. "Come again?"

"They were under the armor when you decanted," I explained, slowly.

"Ooh . . . I'd never figured out how to get the suit off," she explained, tapping her fingers together and smiling wide enough to show al of her shiny white teeth.

What? "Then how did you go to the bathroom?"

"I didn't. The suit did this thing where I didn't have to."

Quick check, how in the hell . . . ? Not important! That was enough about that.

"Okay, let's forget that bit of strangeness and move on. Question and answer time. Did you know that the materials those clothes are made of consist of self-regenerating unstable molecules?"

She shook her head.

"Okay. How about the fact that the costume has a complete data processing and telemetry system woven into its fabric on a molecular level, making it a wearable computer? No? That it forms a network with anyone else who has a similar getup? Providing a constant, real time uplink of everyone's physical condition as well as their location and current situation. Capable of displaying data and has touch-pad controls on the gloves? That its sensors can track all of the team's uniforms and provide a picture of their immediate vicinity? And that it also has an intricate scanner system which can detect things around the wearer, from how many people are in the next room to what dimension or planet you're on? I couldn't find a single stitch in any piece of it."

She was frowning at me and making fists on her hips while shaking her head. "No, no, no, and no! As a matter of fact, I didn't know any of that."

"You're telling the truth."

"How do you know that? You didn't give me a chance to answer!"

"I have a truth telling program. Everything you say, the way you stand, the depth of the breath you take, feeds me information."

"That's a serious invasion of privacy!"

"So is watching you in the shower, but you don't see me complaining."

She attacked me.

Yelling a war cry, hands glowing and clawed, she performed a perfect tiger strike.

She also bounced off my new shield and was thrown back on the bed.

She shook her head and sat up, "What the hell?"

"That was a test. Better try harder to control those instincts those others are shoving at you, my dear. I also took the opportunity to reverse engineer your battle suit while you were asleep, in exchange for room and board. Thanks for helping me test it," her not having a name is really bothering me. "If you don't choose a name for yourself I'm going to pick one for you. "

"Geese! Armsmaster much? Sorry about attacking you." She wasn't. It was a blatant lie and we both knew it. She folded her arms and waited.

And waited some more.

Oh, she was one of those silent-treatment types. This also gave her a "win" in the home disputes thing by offering the olive branch first.

"I'm sorry I made you mad." Partial lie. Seeing her attack me in real life with super powers was all kinds of awesome! " I'm going to be giving you a truth telling program to go with your new and improved Mark 00.2 battle armor. And, okay, I'm going to say right now that I'm not sorry that I got to see you naked. I'd also like to abuse that bed you're sitting on."

She jumped off it like it was hot.

"I'm not your fantasy sex object!" she yelled.

"Yeah, so?"

She frowned at me. "You some kind of bastard?"

I help up a my right arm with its new gauntlet. "Truth telling device. There's no point in lying or being evasive. It's actually kind of liberating. I mean let's face it, you're one of three fantasy characters who's seen way too much Rule 34. And the body's not even yours. Right?"

She hummed and hawed. "No." she admitted, looking to the side. "It's a lot better and I like it . . . "

"Okay then. I'll try to be more civil from now on. Let's try this again. My name is Norman. What's yours? Tell me a little about yourself."

Glaring at me, "My first name is Nicolle, but I'm not the Nicole Sullivan. She's my idle, my name has two "LLs" in it," she paused, thinking about how much to tell me. "I was moving to Virginia to start my career in public broadcasting on one of the kids shows when my train derailed. Don't know much more than that beyond waking up about a thousand miles from here. I have all the knowledge and skills of a 3-person fusion character. Nice to meet you."

She ground out that last part real well.

My turn I guess. "My name is Norman, reborn into the body of a 21 year old body of myself. I have a shard from the WORM Universe that ROB ripped off to give me the power to manipulate microscopic matter, enabling me the ability to create nanomachines and picotech. I used my powers to rebuild my body and rewire my brain to survive. I have short-term memory problems because of it so I don't remember last week too well. I had a dead end job. But now I have a self-replicating machine of war. My old life can suck it. You?"

"Ditto." She held out her right hand and made it "Green Flame On!" "That is just all kinds of cool." And her clothes survived the experience.

Too bad.

I put my hand out. "Friends?"

She extinguished the flame and extended it to me. "Friends."

We shook.

She held onto my hand for an extra moment. "Did you really watch me in the shower?"

"No," horny young man with new super-peeper cyborg-powers or not, I wasn't THAT stupid.

She buried my hand in a crushing grip that left fractures in my fancy new bones, "Good for you," before she let go.

I shook my hand out as the nanomachine rapidly repaired the damage. Also started working on Bone Armor Mark 01.1.

"So what's the plan now, boss?" Nicolle asked. "World domination?"

"Already in progress. This dead-end planet is not fit for humans such as you and I. Thirty percent of the place is being examined by my machines and satellites are being launched to look at the rest. By the time the sun sets the place will be covered. Then I can build us a ship and get out of there."

"Sounds good. But don't these stories usually have us gallivanting around alternate versions of earth? Aren't you lacking in a FTL Drive?"

Smart girl.

"Yes. Could you solve that?"

She shrugged. "Ranger Mira Nova had a very good education." Holding her right elbow in her left hand she taps at her lower lip with the other in a thinking pose. "Star Command starcruisers are Andromeda-class, the highest in existence. They come equipped with a variety of energy based weapons and missile launchers, which the part of me that's Shego likes very much, though they could have used more. . . . Practically every minute not spent in training or studying or living a life, was spent working on that ship and doing maintenance. I could probably kludge something up. I'd - I mean Mira Nova's done it before. But we don't have crystallic fusion."

"We can get crystallic fusion."

"We can? How?"

"Progenitor technologies are bullshit. The crystals from your suit are being farmed and harvested."

"Really? "as if doubting me.

"Really," I nodded. "Even if the experiments in farming the crystals are a failure we can always brute-force it with Progenitor power generators. With my economy fully online we can spend as much time as we want creating unlimited prototypes until we have something that works."

"Where would we go?"

"I don't know. We might be meant to do something on this planet. Or something will find us." I shrugged. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Well, room and board in exchange for any technological bits you have is nice and all. Companionship is great – I'd like to take you to dinner when we get back to earth. But do you really want to come with me into potential danger?"

She thought about it. "A month ago I would have said no. Shego never runs from a challenge. Drew Saturday is a warrior and a scientist and an adventurer. And Nova is too stubborn and curious to let this die. Yeah, I'm going with you. You're not leaving me on this dust-ball that's for hell and sure! Also, the date thing? Yeah, I'm going to put that in the maybe pile."

I did a fist bump.

She rolled her eyes.

"Then, to miss-quote a movie: We have powers and abilities which we've only just begun to scratch the potential of. And I need to learn how to use battle armor."

"And a sword," she added.

I nodded. Because sure, why not? "And a sword."

"So, training?"

"Training," I confirmed.

Nicolle grinned evilly.

She was so going to kick my ass.


	4. Arc 1 Chapter 4

In the days to come I would blame the WORM Shard on my previous actions and come to hate it. I was stupid, it was stupid and Nicolle knew I was being stupid and punished me for it.

"Good morning!"

"You're an idiot."

"I'm an idiot."

"Good morning."

"Good morning."

"What's for breakfast?"

"Mush."

Nicolle knew training.

She started us off with a ten mile run. That is after I re-corrected her figure, got myself back to my normal healthy pink skin, plus a few other things.

Thanks to the near-photographic detail in which she was able to recall the lives of Ranger Mira Nova and Shego who'd live in multiple lair's over the years, Nicolle knew how to design a base, accounting for both advanced technology and mad science. A kinetic sculpture I'd admired years ago became the basis of a track for the training deck deep underground; in which we were to avoid being hit by cars and motorcycles, hop on trains, move through buildings, climb ladders and stairwells and parkour and everything else.

As we moved a few of the Air Ball Scouts pace with us with their sensors and cameras. Mostly they fed us constant feedback to correct our posture and the length of our stride. I didn't have that problem so much because I could see every part of me. I'd also kept the Worm-Cam's development to myself. Got to have a few secrets in case things turned south between us. So I spent most of my time running watching Nicolle Two "Ls."

Running was fun when you were never out of breath and had good shoes.

Also discovered that she had a mean competitive streak.

It should have been obvious, but eh . . .

Nicolle could ghost through walls and do a bunch of other stuff that I couldn't. Being in the absolute best shape of my life didn't cut it. She always won.

Cheating cheater who cheated.

It was mostly power testing for Nicolle who kept discovering all new ways to beat the crap out of me during training and on our runs. I dropped all pretense and started chasing her through the training area for real.

We learned that she could summon the "Go! Team" energy that increased her strength relative to her muscle mass by exactly one hundred times. Didn't need to make herself glow. That was just showing off. She can also use it to jump really high.

"Goddamnit!" I yelled as the girl hopped up a thirty story concrete structure in two seconds.

Clenching my fist and glaring at the distance that now separated us, some part of my brain said I was acting like Ataru from Urusei Yatsura.

Cheating, I used the training level's transformative capability to take direct control of the weapons and machinery to shoot her or otherwise try and slow her down. Nothing I hit her with did more than tickle, bullet proof. Also anything I used to try and trap her which would, at this point, crush a normal human, did nothing but temporarily inconvenience. She made it a point of pride to always tear her way free – then would have to get it fixed.

The purple aura allowed her to shrink down to the size of a grain of rice or grow to immense size. Insert Marvel hero combat moves here. Combined with her super strength and a glowing green glow that seemed able to damage any material she could probably tear the arm off of a full sized Planetary Commander – if it was anywhere unintelligent enough to let her get near it.

The red glow allowed her to make exactly 99 extra copies of herself. They were each a fully functioning duplicate with their own thoughts and independent ideas; subconsciously they could pull off astounding feats of mutual cooperation that is just downright scary.

10 of them were in the library; 10 of them were in the machine shop building Shego's hover board, which she'd apparently made herself in her original universe on her own time; 10 more were writing down multiple independent journals about their past lives trying to get their heads on straight with a few psychology texts; 10 more were using the computer lab to design as much of the alien tech and mad scientist technology as they could remember. The rest were working out and training while a few more ran around doing errands. Which was a lot of stuff.

I'm glad I have a brain implant. If I didn't have one and saw her doing all this I would have had to get one to keep up.

Then there was the teal-colored glow from her Tangean side, which allowed her to ghost through matter. Her body absorbed a portion of whatever energy was in the matter she was passing through and not even Progenitor Armor could stop her. If she went through something that happened to have power running through it the energy made her super hyper and kind of drunk. Force fields could stop her to an extent, though it became fairly obvious that unless I could figure out the Star Trek equivalent of "Modulating Your Shields" she would use her more advanced and disciplined mind to match the energy of the shield and eventually phase through.

She also told me that she could use her Tangean ghosting power to read minds. She can also render people unconscious using a technique called the Tangean brain squeeze. But there was no fucking way I was letting her put those kinds of moves on me!

"You do that to me and I'll shoot you," I declared, pulling a gun so fast it made her blink.

She held up her hands. "Sure, sure, hey, no problem. Never between friends." Backing away slowly.

Snarky witch with all the powers. You know, as soon as we got a decent process for creating some instant artificial coffee she goes and drinks it all? Bitch!

-000-

"I think I know where we are," I said at dinner later that night.

She looked up from her mush.

We were eating in a minimalist cafeteria of the kind you would find in a college dorm. The fabricators had been programed to get creative with our meals and had been serving samples for the last hour. The place was just a living room and kitchen combo with the entertainment center on one end.

"Give me a moment to turn my taste buds back on," Niccole grabbed a glass of water and threw the tiny paper cup into the trash can. It was incinerated in a flash of red nanites.

Then she grabbed a handful of candy.

Food was going to be a long-term problem.

Hydrocarbons and other chemicals which could be used to make foods like sugar, salt, honey, candy and so forth were comparatively easy. It didn't take but an hour with my shard to nail down just about every kind of high-molecular-weight and low-molecular-weight synthesized compound you could imagine. After all I had full access to the Internet of 2016 and a lot of classified scientific research that I drank like fish. This gave us biopolymers, especially proteins and polysaccharides (starch and cellulose) at one end of the spectrum, but also vitamins and amino acids at the other end. So we had medicine and diet pills and a host of chemical combinations which are usually added to natural food products to increase their protein content.

What I was looking for is a process which allows for the synthesis of any food substance from chemical elements.

At present we only had two options for major food sources. The first was the collecting, farming and harvesting of animal and plant food products from the countryside, which are poisonous to human beings that have to be heavily processed before consumption.

Backing this up was a Synth-Bio Farm that used tissue samples from Nicolle and myself to start the long process of breeding alga, bacteria, viruses, assorted other microorganisms and fungi. This would eventually give us a series of foods synthesized by microorganisms, particularly yeasts. Yeasts synthesize protein at a remarkable rate and can grow both on food mediums, such as sugar, and on nonfood mediums, such as petroleum hydrocarbons. Yeasts are thus a promising and virtually inexhaustible source of artificial food products. However, the wide use of microbiological sources requires the development of efficient methods for obtaining and processing highly purified proteins and also demands thorough medical and biological research. In 2016 it was a common dietary supplement for farm animals so it should be good enough for us.

Nicolle called it dog food.

I'm glad we have all those medical texts and videos to fall back on because it was the only way we could get through dissecting our shit for seeds and tissue samples to clone with a straight face. We had over fifty different "food" fabricators going. Most were making seeds.

Slowly.

We were going to have to wait months, even years, before we could have decent fruits and vegetables. The big Electronic Book of 2016 had rather extensive knowledge of our agriculture and genetic engineering, including DNA in electronic format. There were, well, lots of options when it came to creating something organic. If one method didn't work, options 2 through 200 should get us something.

Trampling over all kinds of international laws concerning genetic engineering, here!

The Synth-Bio Farm was also going to be used to clone and/or manufacture additional human body parts, organs and so forth. If all else fails a Franken-burger made from my own cloned muscle mass was a soon to be a realized possibility.

"Any good?" I asked.

"Tasted like spicy erasers; what did you find?"

"This," I pulled up the side image to the side of a red mountain.

In the side of the mountain was a big hole. But what was more important were the machines in front of it. One was rather distinct. It was a large cylinder, wider than it was tall, like a can of tuna. It had four legs, a dome on top, and a pilot cockpit underneath. But what made it weird was the red face in front.

Nicolle's bright-eyed enthusiasm cooled towards disinterest. "A robot. So what?"

"This is no ordinary robot," I declared, getting excited. "Now look here."

There was another robot, consisting mostly of a humanoid torso, with arms and head attached to a giant wheel and two smaller wheels on the sides.

Both robots had been torn apart in some sort of long ago battle with dust having gathered against the remains.

Nicolle was still unimpressed. "So what?"

"So that, my friend, is a Robotix," I declared, getting up. "Come on. There's stuff to loot."

"Loot?" you could hear the cashier "Cha-Ching!" as she said that. Dollar signs in her eyes and everything. "What kind of loot?"

"Technological goods. And if I'm right, a way to get us off this junkyard heap of a planet."

"Anything's better than this garbage," she declared.

We abandoned the cafeteria for the robots to clean up and headed out.

In moments we were on a transport heading south. From the outside it looked like a cross between the Spruce Goose and every other aircraft built since. It had eight jet engines, six in front and two in the back. Plus the usual magnetic accelerator railguns, missiles, laser weapons, and bombs. Some of the more exotic stuff had to be left out because we were passengers and wouldn't survive their use. There was only enough room for a dozen people on board despite its immense size. The rest was Progenitor armor, power and stealth systems and the like.

We listened to some music on the way to the hole in the ground.

-000-

On the way I managed to explain to Nicolle what a Robotix was, and we watched the movie over two bowls of JELL-O dosed with artificial sugar.

You could either watch the movie yourself or read my review. There was a review by this guy I found on YouTube, but he got so many facts wrong it wasn't worth watching. Don't watch it.

Here I go.

Robotix: The Movie, started out just as another cartoon series to help sell toys with a theme towards construction, modular parts and the transformation craze sweeping the nation. Unlike the Transformers these guys hadn't done so well and they were lost in time. In my opinion they did better than Go-Bots.

The movie starts out with a crew of all-male space explorers in some nifty space clothes on the run from one of your generic star-cruiser knockoffs that shoots at them a lot with lasers until they crash on some unknown planet. The star cruiser leaves them for dead and we're never given an explanation for why. After all these years I've just decided that they were space jerks.

Within moments of landing giant robots come up from the ground and start fighting each other. After a few minutes the evil Terrakors leave, but the helpful robot Protectons offer to help repair the human's ship so that they can leave as quickly as possible so as to not get caught up in the war.

In the process of reconstruction one of the robots lowers itself to the ground for a moment and one of the more curious and younger humans goes up to the machine and climbs into the cockpit. Once inside a glass dome lowers onto the kid's head and then proceeds to unfurl some wires to make a man/machine interface.

It is then revealed that humans can interface with Robotix to enhance their abilities, the machines could transform too.

The Robotix came in all kinds of funny shapes that, on the whole didn't make a lot of sense. That is until you factored in their ability to selectively transform different parts of their bodies or even their entire body into something completely new and different at the drop of a hat.

After a second battle in which the humans help the Protectons defeat the Terrakors and send them running away, a backstory is revealed. It is then that we learn that about three million years ago the then organic lizard-like races of the Protectons and Terrakors were forced to set aside their hostilities when their second sun began to go nova. A fact that I could now back up with archeological evidence from the few graves and bones being found. They were originally one species long ago. The Terrakors, which are more lizard-like, are meat eaters. While the Protectons, which looked like cute monkeys evolved from lizards, were omnivores. Both have four fingered hands.

As if that weren't enough (when is it ever isn't?) the Terrakors had some serious territorial issues and nothing got them off like building new weapons. One of these weapons was the Terror Star, a giant starship and war machine that looked like a flying predatorily bird that was so complicated that only Compucore could operate it. A giant computer that had the unique distinction of looking like three old-fashioned rockets fused together into one tall structure with a giant TV on top for a head, hovered off the ground to move around on its own, with its own unique ability to transform and manufacture the tools it needed to make up for the fact that it was basically a mobile building.

After it was revealed that the sun of Skalorr, the planet they're all fighting over and the one we found ourselves on, is about to go Nova things become a little crazy as civilization starts to collapse and the environment goes nuts.

Nemesis, the leader of the Terrakors and all-round bully, proposes that they use the Terror Star to transport a select group of people to another planet since construction was complete. But they needed Compucore, the central intelligence of the planet, to pilot it. Argus, leader of the Protectons, argues that the plan would only allow for the survival of a few hundred, leaving everyone else to die. The question is then put to Compucore to find a solution, itself suggesting the use of underground stasis tubes to preserve the entire population until years later when radiation levels had decreased enough it was safe for them to come out and begin the long process of rebuilding their civilization. Naturally everyone then agrees to put their faith in Compucore. Among the tools stored away were the Robotix, presumably the next generation of the sci-fi equivalent to construction machines.

Only things didn't work out that well. Due to an accident the secure bunker was breeched and threatened to kill them all anyway. Things would have ended there if Compucore hadn't taken emergency action before everyone under its care died of radiation poisoning. It is then forced to transfer and store their essences within itself, thus transferring all of their memories, thoughts, personalities and quirks into what is assumed to be electronic storage while their organic bodies, which had been waiting around for 3 million years, finally died. Pretty impressive to be able to store the minds of two species and countless thousands of individuals without a problem.

When the radiation levels finally subside to normal, millions of years later, Compucore transfers the essences of four Protectons and four Terrakors into the Robotix – the giant machines created to rebuild Skalorr – including the leaders of the two factions, who then start fighting each other over old grievances. I'd be kind of pissed too if I'd lost my organic body and woke up to find it nearby rotting away. The ensuing battle led to the events and various adventures in the movie.

While I'd enjoyed the movie when I was 6 it kind of falls apart when you're older and start taking it apart for the critic. Granted, it was supposed to be a series with 15 episodes 6 minute long that aired as part of the Super Sunday half-hour with other animated shows. Like a Crack fic for TV, it was never developed seriously and it was never intended to be a real movie but it was generally assumed that if it had shown some success like Jem and the Holograms, Inhumanoids and Bigfoot and the Muscle Machines it would have been given a rewrite and made into a full-fledged 22-minute show that made more sense now that most of the groundwork had been laid.

Oh well.

-000-

Soon enough we were VTOL onto a prepared landing pad right in front of the bunker in question. It was the highpoint of summer. Our new suits would protect us from the heat. In the winter conditions would be more tolerable. Nicolle had decided to keep the original appearance of her suit which was mainly white with a red chest plate. Mine had all the same capabilities as hers whose exterior had been altered to look like this Picture from DeviantArt but red instead of blue.

After much deliberation, I also decided to keep the helmet. Also added a voice modulator so that I could have a creepy cyborg voice box and just to mess with people.

"Smooth ride," Nicolle commented as we got off the aircraft. "Why didn't we use the teleporters again?"

"Because the teleporters were designed for self-replicating machines of war, not for squishy humans. I'm waiting for test results."

Outside of the entrance to the bunker were the two Roboix that had drawn my attention to the site.

Narra: The only female character in the series. Her Robotix unit is a small dome with a face, mounted on four powerful legs that are also usable as hands. Her body is significantly durable, and it can remain fully operational and mobile even when some of her legs are severely damaged or even removed. Memorable transformations and features include a hover-jet mode, an ability to hover and slide above ground, crane/grabbers deployable from her legs, and laser cannons deployable from her feet.

Then there was Jerrok: The smallest Robotix of them all. His body looks like a robotic torso and head attached to a giant unicycle, but with two smaller wheels on the sides. Memorable transformations and features include hands with built-in laser cannons and an extreme extension of his arms.

It looked like someone had taken Narra appart and used one of her legs to beat Jerrok into the ground.

After giving them a glance we proceeded inside and down the repaired elevator shaft.

The place we arrived at was just like in the movie/TV-series. A big underground bunker built up for giant machines so there was lots of room to move around, lots of technology that didn't seem to serve any real purpose but to look cool, a garage for the Robotix, an area for servicing and the building for more Robotix, plus a whole wall filled with the mummified corpses of lizard-like humanoids in glass stasis tubes going on for miles without end deep into the earth.

All the other Protecton Robotix were here. In peaces.

There was Bront: The tough guy of the team occupying the largest Robotix. Bront was wrongly accused of sabotaging Zanadon's reactor and almost attacked Kontor and Jerrok, but their partnership was soon reestablished. His Robotix form has a humanoid body from the waist up, two claws for hands, with a complex mobility system that works by placing two tracks down before him which his body then slides over before picking the tracks up behind him. Memorable transformations and features include a car-like form with deployable grabber, an extreme extension of his torso to form a ladder, extendable legs for river crossing, a deployable twin laser cannon of his forehead, and hands combining into a drill-like form.

We found him at the bottom of the elevator shaft. The fall had broken all four of his legs and the lower half of his body. Then the elevator had landed on top of what was left.

Boltar: The gentle beast of the Protectons. His Robotix body has a bulky, bear-like torso on six thin legs. Memorable transformations and features include a humanoid combat form, a helicopter mode, multiple onboard weapon systems, including laser cannons and flamethrowers.

The machine had had his head torn right off somehow.

All of these machines were easily being assimilated thanks to the nanites the fabricator machines could throw down. It was a trivial exercise and soon every scrap and lasting artifact of their entirely dead civilization would be nothing more than a numbered space in our enormous databanks.

It was Compucore I was after. According to the Transformers Wiki and the AllSpark Almanac the Compucore of the planet Skalorr is known to be a Vector Sigma node; "An ancient and incredibly powerful Multiversal supercomputer which exists across many (conceivably all, though this is speculative) universes. Collectively these Multiversal nodes are networked together as the "Vector Sigma Gestalt." And I wanted it.

There were two more Robotix I hadn't talked about yet.

The first was Argus: Leader of the Protectons, a humanoid robot form with a head on a long neck and a curved blade for a right hand. Memorable transformations and features include a car-like form, the hand blade changing into a gun, laser cannons deploying from his chest, a head usable as a ramrod, and a compact mode with shrunken arms and legs.

The other was Nemesis: Ruthless ruler of the Terrakors. His robot form was of a blue humanoid with a lizard-like head and beak. Memorable transformations and features included a left hand capable of extreme extension and shifting into a laser gun, super-sharp beam whips built into hands, and small threads built into feet for high speed rolling functions

I mention them now because when we went down into the lower levels of the base I found Nemesis and Argus embraced in death with Argus's knife-hand shoved through Nemesis's chest.

All the other Robotix had been torn apart. Of the human bodies only the smashed remains of bones were found.

And what of Compucore?

It was sitting in the corner with one side of the machine having been torn out.

Nicolle looked around at the remains of the base as the fabricators reconstructed and reclaimed. "Well, isn't this disappointing. Did we come all the way here for nothing?"

"This is most definitely not a waste of our time," I declared as the remains of the giant machines were dissolved down into their component parts. "Even now my Think Tank is using the data to recreate the machines down to their individual atomic components. Just think Nicolle, my machines will be able to transform too. From robot to vehicle to aircraft. No need for a proto-form or an altar-form. Just pure adaptability and a variety of useful forms one after the other."

I was positively shaking with excitement.

"And then there is Compucore," I remarked as the machine was put upright and covered in red nanites. "The knowledge of an entire civilization, of every living thing within it. A man/machine interface so complete, that you could transfer yourself between bodies as easily as you put on clothes. Now, watch."

In mere moments Compucore was fully assembled and working again. It took only moments for it to boot up and take a look around.

"Greetings human." It said.

"Hello Compucore. Report status," I barked.

"All Compucore systems fully operational."

I frowned. It really was as dumb as my nanites were telling me. "Status of the essence of the Protectons and Terrakors in storage?"

"The essence of all Protectons and Terrakors has been preserved."

"Does that include backup copies of Argus, Bront, Jerrok, Narra, Boltar, Kontor, Nemesis, Tyrannix, Steggor, Goon, Venturak, and Terragar?"

"Yes."

"What of the humans?" I asked. "The ones that died here?"

"All humans perished in the final battle except for Zarru."

Nicolle asked, "What happened to him?"

I looked at her.

She looked at me then shrugged. "Well, since we're asking questions."

"Zarru attempted to repair my systems but found the damage to be too extensive. On the verge of starvation he placed himself into a stasis pod, where I then made a backup of his essence before shutting myself down."

I looked over to the pod indicated, containing one human.

Nicolle and I rushed over to take a look. His clothes were torn to bits and heavily used. Rather than a plucky sixteen year old, he looked like a kid that just came home from World War 2. It looked like his arm was broken at some point and healed badly.

"Is he alive?" Nicolle stroked the glass.

"No."

-000-

Compucore really was all that and a bag of chips.

Unlike earths computer system Compucore and the Robotix all made extensive use of neural networks of various complexity. The neural net could be 'trained' to control a vehicle or other machine, then installed to actually control the machine in real time. Moreover, the neural net learning capability can be left turned on, so that the system learns how to do an increasingly better job at control and also can learn how to deal with previously un-encountered situations.

It was truly wonderful stuff. There was also a means by which knowledge could be inserted directly into the neural network, omitting the first 'training' phase, resulting in so-called Expert Networks that not only learn from experience but have the ability to explain how or why they reach a given conclusion, in case a concerned human is back-seat driving. This also explained how the Skalorr essence when transferred into the Robotic were able to get up and move around so effectively without relearning how to move their new limbs.

The difference here is that Compucore made use of both neural networks and traditional computer hardware to achieve high grade synthesis. So while the neural network is good for creating computer brains and AI, the computer was good at doing computer things.

Compucore was not the first but the second generation of a very powerful machine that was designed by a previous generation of artificial intelligence to surpass it. But Compucore had a very limited mind. It was specifically designed to be an expert system that managed other expert systems. It was never intended to operate on its own. Even after three million years of having nothing to do but think with all the knowledge of Skalorr within itself it had never evolved.

It couldn't get happy, it couldn't get sad, it couldn't laugh at your jokes, was incapable of becoming bored or feeling fear and had no survival instincts to speak about.

Naturally, I put it out of its misery as soon as possible.

On the other hand, I now had a sufficiently advanced computer that I knew with 100% certainty wouldn't go Skynet on me.

Universe, meet Professor Theopolis.

From close up it looked like a futuristic building of some sort. About the size of the Empire State Building in New York. But instead of concrete this baby was made out of black and gold metal. And like everything else I owned it had red neon highlights. Arranged around it were 12 other buildings containing the new hardware for Computers Blue, Red, Green, Silver, Black, Yellow and Orange. The Missions Operations Manager program (MOM) was retired (smirk) married into the Professor Theopolis super alien computer.

They weren't mobile and so nobody could steal them without my consent and large applications of fire power.

Anyway, it took three days to build and one of the first things I put my Think Tank computers to doing was integrating and finding uses for all the knowledge I'd just acquired.

Of course once the facilities were available underground that's where I was going to relocate everything.


	5. Arc 1 Chapter 5

"So, What do you think?"

Nicolle shrugged. "It's a very impressive, if large, computer. It's suggestions have been good so far."

"Yes, and?" I swear, sometimes it was like pulling teeth with her!

"Build it if you want. You're the tech dude. I'm just the super powered and very hot looking teenager." She fluffed her hair.

Insufferable!

It was only because of my nanotechnology that she was going to get to look that way for the rest of eternity.

(Humph!) "Well, I am going to build it. Them, I mean. Lots of them."

I smiled a predatory smile.

The result was really cool too. And it didn't dip too badly into my metal economy either since we'd gotten sufficient storage to build up ass loads of stock. Digging out the planet for the super-subway system had paid huge dividends.

Basically what I wanted to do was built an elevator that went all the way out into space. Though I'd end up just about stripped the solar system of carbon for the first 12 prototypes. You could call it a building, but it's seriously over-everything to call it that.

On the other side of the planet we had a growing system of both rotating and non-rotating skyhooks, which were to eventually be placed around the entire solar system.

A Non-Rotating Skyhook is basically a space elevator that uses all the same characteristics BUT! – and it's a very big but! – it differs from a geostationary space elevator in that a skyhook would be much shorter and would not connect with the ground of (Insert Planet's Name Here.) It has a counterweight and is perched in gravity between falling down to the planet and falling up into the sky. The benefit of having such an object over your head is that they weren't dependent on having a solid and geologically stable anchor into the crust of the planet and they can be moved. It was hard to do but it can be done. Then all you had to do was use a suborbital launch vehicle to reach the things lower end and dock.

Blimps and floating platforms in the sky were a thing now.

Basically, a Rotating Skyhook is a heavy orbiting space station with a big cable extended from either end, sometimes placed over the surface of a planet. As it rotates the cables dip down towards the surface and uses its momentum to pick up cargo and move it into space as it turns. It required a modicum of aerodynamics as it goes in and out of the atmosphere and required a propulsion system for altitude control.

I didn't even need to use very advanced technology to make it happen. Both the Rotating and Non-Rotating Skyhooks can be built with materials and technology just from Earth 2016. I was much beyond that now and I already had a growing space industry.

Anyway, back to my Sky Line Space Elevator.

The final result had a lot of the overly-large overly-engineered Rings that I mentioned before threaded through the Space Elevator like beads regulating its position and weight. Hanging off the sides of these giant rings were a variety of complexes that went all the way to the counterweight asteroid that had been snagged for the purpose; which was currently being mined and rebuilt as a prototype space station using information Nicolle had provided about Star Command. This allowed me to get stuff from the planet and into space in a very efficient manner. It was less polluting than rockets – as if Progenitors would dirty their systems with such inefficient designs – or any other kind of thrusting system for that matter; but it was much less energy intense than using teleporters.

One problem I hadn't taken into account was that we needed a method to reel in the Sky Line just like bridges and fishing line needed methods to take up slack and deal with tension on the frame so that it could flex and yet remain taunt. Shouldn't have been that difficult. After all, sailors have been reeling in sail and nets for thousands of years and we have machinery that can do the same job now. Easy right?

The massive Space Reel and maintenance complex.

Ha-ha, yeah, okay, no; so I was wrong.

But we got it done and it was working.

My space elevator had a cargo pod that was just over half a mile tall and was capable of sending an estimated 2,000 of these things into the sky each day. I was looking forward to handling something like 10 billion metric tons of cargo on a regular basis, either monthly or daily or however that works out.

That was just for starters.

It went like a Swiss watch.

Lots of experimentation had been required to get things right since the Progenitors had zip in their databases about such a thing. They were too vulnerable to attack even if they were inclined to build one and required a lot of metal and energy to build. But once we had one we were, by definition, fully economically engaged.

Simulations indicate that all three systems would work much more efficiently on a planet without an atmosphere. On a planet with a thick atmosphere, like a gas giant, space elevators are preferred. Updated from a Jig, I call those Gas Mines.

However in space, in orbit between planets, rotating skyhook stations are like the pit stops and gas stations on the roads to stars. Payloads can be brought into the station at the middle and then attached to the cables there. As the station rotates the package is accelerated as it "falls" and reaches the end of the cable until it is released. Then it was just a matter of playing pool on a billiard table the size of a solar system.

They were energy efficient in the use of solar energy. No rockets-like thrust. No debris to clutter up the space lanes. Very neat. A few hundred of these spinning around would make a most efficient transportation system. Everything could be powered by solar energy.

Way back when I broached the concept to the Xeno-Commander for applications for improving our economy, like on the second day I was up and about, I could have sworn that something inside it sat up and took notice.

I wanted 3 space elevators and 24 rotating skyhooks per planet.

We'll see where it goes from there.


	6. Arc 1 Chapter 6

I was sitting around in the office at my new Altwork Station wallowing in my misery whilst looking at the designs of our new starship – which hadn't been built yet – when Nicolle walked in.

"Norm, I've been using our new deep space Arcady satellites to scan for anomalies and I've found something interesting." Nicolle said to me one day.

Those other Commanders made it look so damn easy. And they had it easy. Each one was quite literally a bullshit super alien computer for a brain. I was still human. For the past two months I'd been learning. To the left of the main screen was another screen holding in kindle-like format the sum total knowledge of the human race; specifically that of nanomachine technology. On the right of the main screen was the sum total knowledge of the two races of Skalorr, representing about two hundred and fifty years more progress. With all my updates and bits of genetic engineering, an implant that allowed an insane learning curve it was damn difficult.

Oh, getting the information into storage was easy. I could either read it from a book or upload it directly. But then I still had to learn and figure out how to apply it.

Thankfully Professor Theopolis was a damn good teacher.

Nicolle had it easier since she could split herself into a hundred versions of herself and do everything I was trying to do and more. She already had a very advanced education from three different lives. She was leaving me behind fast.

Throwing the holographic image away I looked up as she crossed the room. She was even carrying a tray with our synthetic coffee and foods on fancy chinaware.

"Here, take a break," she put the food before me.

"Thanks."

"I worked out an app for my clothes. Watch," she spun around. Her mission outfit quickly changed from green to red to orange, brown, blue, purple, teil, before settling on white with the black checkered background.

(Humpf!) I was too busy eating. I was depressed.

"Problems?"

The food had improved a bit. Meals were shaped into solid crunchy bricks an inch tall and 3X4 inches wide made from algae. They came in seven different colors. Vegetables came from another part of the planet with a different ecosystem that were human-editable. They looked like limp ferns but was actually a type of seaweed as long as my arm you ate whole. Heavy on the sugar. For drinks I had a choice between red goop and blue sewage.

Not exactly the fair I'd imagined myself eating when going off into space.

I engaged the speaker system in the room so I could talk while my teeth ripped the pieces of my meal into chunks and sent them to my stomach.

"My shard. I know the answers before the questions are asked and it's damn difficult to show my work. Progress is slow but fast. I can go through a year's worth of school work in a day but actual understanding of the science is no greater than that of the average student."

She took hold of the screen and spun it around. "How's work on the starship?"

"Difficult. Human Tech is too primitive, Skalorr Tech is advanced enough but needs to be reverse engineered first to be applied to servicing human beings. It's all there, but I can't just put it together!"

We'd had this conversation a few times already.

She sighed and crossed her arms. "Maybe this will help you focus then. Get your mind off it." She stepped back and held up a light-pad. "You want to know what I've found?"

"Sure," I replied as I ate and drank.

I'd invade a planet for an apple.

The alien microorganisms got into every damn thing!

Thank god I'd adjusted our digestive system for the roughage or we'd be farting and shitting all over the place.

"Here," she handed me the transparent slate of glass, which lit up at my touch to display our solar system and various readings. "I'm not entirely certain since I'm not an expert on dimension travel, but I believe that the entire solar system is out of phase with the rest of the universe. See file IYG-62534."

The file starts with some highlights from the science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager, 132nd episode titled "Blink of an Eye." Mostly about an entire planet enveloped inside of a tachyon field, giving it an odd temporal nature that causes years to pass in minutes.

Nicolle's discovery revealed that the entire solar system was caught up inside a similar anomaly. Only instead of decades we were talking about a speedup of only an extra seven minutes to each hour. Satellites and other machinery sent beyond the Oort cloud reveal that they cannot find their way back except by dead reckoning with the stars around them. She'd also taken the time to review Progenitor stealth technologies and sensors and this strange field beat them both in the hiding from sensors and being a better stealth field.

We were completely out of phase with reality.

I put the pad down and leaned back in my comfy red leather chair until I was almost lying prone.

A solar system like this would make the perfect hideout. A star could blow up right in our faces as we'd be completely unaffected.

"This is amazing." I declared. "Have you managed to match up the stars yet?"

She shook her head, no.

So we still didn't know where we are.

She stood up suddenly and clapped her hands together, "Well, forget about that now. I think you'll like what I've got even better."

From behind her through the door came a pod. It looked like a long egg on its side with the Robotix control console, chair, and glass dome with the man/machine interface inside.

"What's that?" I got up from the desk and went around to see it. Nothing seemed to be different from the factory standard.

"You know how I can't have an implant but the interface works fine?" she asks.

Yeah, her special powers degrades implants something fierce; I'd had to replace hers four times before we gave up.

At my nod she hopped inside. "Well, with this I can send my mind into the computer and control things with pure thought. Even download knowledge directly. It only took twelve minutes to upload the entire British Encyclopedia into my head."

I frowned. "I'm so fucken jealous. You can do all this shit and I can't even design a decent spacecraft."

"So try it out." She got out.

I took a seat and accessed the minimal controls. Manual overrides and such. Life support for extensive stays. All good. Leaning back I watched as the dome lowered itself over my head. Then chair wires came out and attached themselves to the sides of my head. Not much had changed.

A security program came up and tried to take control of my mind for a quick grope and strip search. In a duel of mental swordsmanship I defeated the program and sent it packing.

Nicolle was getting more creative with the security systems, but I was still top gun in the computer department thanks to my Shard and continuing education.

"You're getting better," I tell her.

She shrugged, not really trying anymore.

Nothing much had changed except for a few curious alterations to the software, easily understood. It came with an upgrade package for my brain which I accepted after a cursory evaluation.

The result, after a bit of finagling, was a multi-tier implant.

This was fucking incredible!

"You like?" Nicolle smiled.

"It's wonderful! With this I can do so much more!"

It was quite amazing too.

After a few bumps and false starts that my shard was more that capable of overcoming I became the computer, and the computer increased by a million fold my ability to handle complex problems.

No longer limited to just my own skull I expanded into the systems within the chair itself and then to the rest of the room and more before I came up to my new limits.

My mind focused on a nearby Bot factory, in a mental projection becoming the Bot factory entire. The next robot to come off the assembly line was undoubtedly our finest creation yet. It looked perfectly human and with some practice (hours of) it could walk, talk, act and react just like I would. The robot was my eyes, ears, and even, thanks to special circuits, my nose. A flesh-form chamber enabled me to design the thing to look any way I wanted, down to the flexible blue veins in the hands and the tiniest hairs. It could be old or young, male or female. Of course each machine had to be at least six feet tall and of minimum build. The basic robot inside could not be altered too much without giving something up.

Happy with one, Nicolle and I continued to work at it.

Additional programming followed with help from Professor Theopolis.

It was an interface perfected, the marriage of man and self-aware machine.

With additional work and special dedicated machinery it turned out that it was possible for me to control 42 different robots in parallel. Each with its own, completely, independent, thread!

Just like a Commander.

Without the interface and the neural networks, the human brain could not have done it.

There were all kinds of side benefits as well. Enhanced recall, direct communication of knowledge, thought, and memory using fully formed engrams through the computer itself. Thought, experience, knowledge, even intrinsic understanding could be downloaded directly into the mind. Touch an icon and be enlightened.

And no surgery for an implant either. It was completely wireless.

It took days but we were eventually able to make a working copy of Nicolle's sword fighting skill and transfer them into my brain. When next we fought she did not immediately trounce and cut me. Differences in our physical forms had to be overcome but they were a minor "working-problems."

I learned Kung-Fu.

I learned how to pilot an aircraft.

I got better at playing video games.

I learned the fine art of breaking and entering.

I learned, just about, everything that Nicolle now knew how to do from her other lives.

"Now, about that spaceship . . . ?"

Strumming the guitar, I looked up and realized I hadn't thought about it all week, "Um, what about it?"

"Think you can finish it now?" she asked.

Shrugging in non-commitment. "I still have to learn how the hard way, with books," I muttered.

"Even still?" Nicolle grumped, her right hand tensing into a claw. "Even after all of this?"

"Yeah, well, I can't just upload the data and know it! You know? I'm not a bullshit Commander! I still have to learn it. But being able to split my mind into 42 will help immensely."

"What about the Skalorr-ians?"

"Their brains are too different. I can't cross patch engrams. I have to learn all of their science the old fashioned way, with books. But at least I can do it faster now."

She frowned ferociously. "So what's the problem? The real one?"

I sighed. "Look, my Shard makes me a master of nanotechnology with various fields of science that lets me branch out into a lot of areas, all right? I can make super bullshit nanomachines. I can use those nanomachines to make stuff. But I am not a rocket scientist! A starship is insanely complicated! I can get the factory to build the parts, but getting the parts together? Super hard! A starship is like one of the most complicated things ever built by man! So many things have to be built to exacting tolerances and they all have to work together perfectly the first time, and it has to keep us alive!"

"So build the starship with nanomachines."

Getting angry, "I told you, I'm trying –"

"No, no, no. You're trying the dumb way," she yelled at me, just as loud as I was getting. "Listen to what I'm saying. Don't build a starship with nanomachines. Build a starship, with, just, nanomachines!"

"Build a starship with nanomachines? That's what I just . . . just with nanomachines. Just with nanomachines?"

I slapped myself.

Then I dive into some science fiction literature.

Of course it was so simple!

Go with my strengths. Nanomachine technology. Just do it on a larger scale! Cut and paste.

In a few minutes I was lost. Deeply linked with the computer and working furiously in full tinker-fugue, I still had enough presence of mind to keep a thread in reserve to watch through the security cameras as Nicolle left with a smirk on her face.

"Nicolle?"

"Yes, Norman?"

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."


	7. Arc 1 Chapter 7

Okay, double edged sword time.

My shard from the Worm Universe makes me fully capable in the sciences of chemistry, biology and electrical engineering, along with the ability to manipulate microscopic matter, made me an incredible Nano Engineer.

On the other hand, it also made it very hard for me to learn anything else without having these blinders on that makes me see everything in terms of my power.

Hence why I'd been having trouble making an old-fashioned starship by studying the crap out of my brains and trying to Go By The Book.

But, when you go from "Use factories and nanomachines to make parts for starship," to "Use factories and nanomachines to make a starship out of nanomachines," things become a whole lot easier, for me.

Start with a small purpose built Progenitor factory about the size of a 10 foot cube. It looks like a conch shell made out of square metal blocks folded together like origami, if that makes any sense. The (SS = Star Ship) SS factory pours out nanomachines into the environment which then strip-mine the land and return with the material back to the factory. In the process it also builds up its own economy with gallons of liquid nanites that ended up looking like a circulatory system pumped full of oil and liquid copper spread over half the landscape. Eventually there's a crater, but also thousand gallons of nanomachines and a brand new "ship."

About two hundred feet wide.

Our ships needed only a few things: the frame, the engines, the weapons, the factory and a brain box, which is mostly a box filled with nanomachines that arrange themselves into chains mimicking the synapses of a living brain and neural network. Life support too. All made to plug-and-play.

When it was done I had an entire ship made out of nanomachines. The walls were nanomachines, the wires were nanomachines, the controls were nanomachines. The factory would produce components that could not be reproduced with the nanomachines, like the power generators, more factories or the ship's weapons. The ship would take the parts and then place them where they were needed to go.

"So this is a Nano-Ship, eh?" Nicoll asked as she stood before the floating shiny disk, luggage in tow.

I nodded. "I based it off this Book I read." I explained. "Self-repairing and transformable. You can change the interior and exterior however you like. With Progenitor technologies it'll keep pumping out mass that we can use to make it grow and add more weapons or whatever we like."

"Just like in the book?" she asked.

"Just like in the book," I reaffirmed.

The great big saucer opened up a side nearest us and poured out a stream of black nanites that assembled into a cheap stairway to the inside. Another idea I got from a movie. Also a lot of the interior ended up like the stuff from the movie so you, my unknown readers, might want to watch the trailer at least.

We got onboard.

Inside the ship was all metal. It varied from ore to ore. If you had the microscope held up against the wall you could have seen the circuitry built into it. Everything was made out of some type of metal or glass with simple aerodynamic curves. Where it was sharp it was also perfectly flat, like a mirror. It was sorta-kinda steam-punk-esq, but there were no wields, bolts, screws or panels. Just smooth unblemished metal. It gave itself a whole new artistic style reminiscent of the Machine Age and Disneyland.

As we moved through the ship walls would divide themselves to create entryways and the floors would go up and down underneath our feet to provide a smooth passage to the center of the ship. Eerily silent in their movement. Closing and rearranging itself around us. Technically there were no walls or floors. The machinery was organized in the most efficient manner possible. Any part of the ship could become a door or window.

In the middle of the ship was a special chamber. After we stepped inside the entryway closed behind us, the walls giving off a soft blue light. It was just like being inside a geodesic structure at the playground like when you crawl up under the jungle gym. Again it was all metal of various types of chrome. Next, from the floor all around the chamber grew a large red couch that went in a circle without end. Then a few of the geodesic sided walls became TV screens showing us a vision of the outside world all around the ship.

Nicolle threw herself into a seat across from me. "Pretty nice digs, you got some style at least. Kind of reminds me of one of those "special rooms" behind the bar in one of the old anime comics I liked to read," she said while pitching her voice and making a lurid face. She ran her hand along the couch. "Where'd the couch come from?"

"The couch is also nanomachines," I told her as I sat down a table rose up from the floor between us, followed by a "viewing globe:" a large crystal ball filled with liquid and more nanomachines with lasers that created holograms and various images which depicted the ship's systems. "Because of its transformative nature the nanomachines on the interior will have to be replaced, more often if we keep changing things around. They wear out and the programming degrades. Unlike the metal ones that make up the ship, which are larger and profoundly more robust."

"Where's the bathroom?"

"I'll make you one right now."

Once seated the shuttle engaged its anti-gravity system and took off. The ride was about as comfortable as an elevator that never ended. Out in space we maintained 1 Gee of thrust to keep some semblance of gravity on board as we approached our destination. There were no stability systems in place yet. When the ship got larger it would have room for more toys. Eventually we reached mid-point and turned over, then decelerated for the other half of our journey.

There in the place between planets was our new starship.

It was a funny looking thing.

It was an accident, I swear to god!

I'd originally started out with something simple and had Professor Theopolis start cranking out 3D models of every sci-fi ship from every movie and book and comic that could be modeled and sized up with working Progenitor, Skalorr, and Human Tech. Never being really satisfied with any of them.

Simulations were fine for games. What I was doing, essentially, was designing a military device from scratch. To start with I had to have the Avenger rebuilt for combat in three dimensions. The new drone could be attached to stations or ships and as a remote weapons platform in singles or clusters, giving us something I could begin producing now and get into field testing.

The problem wasn't the weapons, it was the defenses. Even Progenitor armor couldn't defend itself against its own weapons without serious upgrades or unbelievable thickness. In space one hit with a railgun round would kill us.

Hell, it had been satisfactorily concluded that a Furbie traveling at a goodly speed of light could take out a star destroyer.

If one round could penetrate the hull, then one round could kill us, or the ship. What was the point putting your economy into building a war machine if one shot nails it before it even gets the chance to try? A one-hit kill was unacceptable.

Sure, you could dodge enemy fire at range using small nimble ships, but naval warfare was predicated on slow, massive Capital level ships slugging it out with each other.

There were a host of other problems. Weapons, armor and propulsion. They were a balancing act.

First, I decided to simplify the thing somewhat and just start off with everything a human being needed to live comfortably enough in space without suffering adverse problems due to gravity.

The concept was simple. Take an asteroid shaped like a potato, apply heat, inflate so it has a nice big interior and shape it so it was vaguely can-like. Then rotate it so you had gravity on the inside and apply decorations. If it wasn't for the information from the Internet Book and the calibrated sensors from the Xeno-Commander I wouldn't have known how much rotation to apply for gravity. I overdid it a bit and we ended up with a cylinder three miles wide and ten miles long. Call it 1.10 Gee.

The interior was completely sterile, you cannot imagine what a complete and utter bitch that was to do!

Not even the back of the moon was that sterile. I had to invent completely new processes to populate the interior of the habitat cylinder with only the microorganisms I wanted and none of those alien ones that kept messing up our foods.

The airlock for the Little Saucier was a thick membrane of nanomachines. Little Saucier managed to smoothly maneuver us up to the membrane and touch it. Then in a move reminiscent of the Blob we were absorbed and allowed to be deposited inside. The airlock was more like the grease trap for your sink in which there were several angles involved like a corkscrew before we arose above a lake of nanomachine and docked with the facilities there like a ship at a marina. From the top we arose straight through the ship's hull and then walked the rest of the way to the shore. Behind us trailed our luggage walking on robotic legs.

Also behind us I knew that the Little Saucier was compacting itself down to the smallest space possible for storage.

Ever looked up what a marina would look like in the future? Well I have and this wasn't it. The place is purely functional, anyway I didn't have the time to redesign every stupid thing. I left those million and one details up to the Xeno-Commander to crank out automatically as they were needed. It was a mixture of Human, Skalorr and Progenitor technology. Imagine yourself inside of some kind of secret cavern under the sea for the next James Bond villain and you'll probably come close.

To exit this area you had to go through the hospital. It stood off to the side a part of this tunnel big enough to drive several trains through going in different directions. It was also filled with nanomachines. It looked like someone had replaced all the air with a big blue blob, sans gelatin. But that was just for cargo so that was the way our luggage went. Nicolle and I went into the hospital. It had its own special airlock with duplicate facilities on each side.

We then had to walk into this nanomachine airlock, take off all our clothes, and then walk to the other side. We'd been living together for the better part of three earth months now. It was like a dorm room at collage where you got used to seeing people moving around in towels after the fact. So seeing each other with a bit of flesh was no big deal. I mean I wasn't going to go off and find myself a cold shower or anything.

She got to look at me too.

As we walked the nanomachines gradually worked themselves into our mouths, down our throats, into our lungs and stomachs and out the other end.

We'd practiced this bit, but enough about that!

Anyway there were clothes for us on the other side.

(Sigh.) "Three years to grow back my hair," Nicolle groaned as she rubbed at her bald head.

"Don't worry love, the salon has a hair tonic I whipped up just for this sort of occasion. You'll have your lovely locks back in three weeks!"

We smiled at each other.

Walking along the interior was strange. Coriolis forces were pulling us down but also slightly sideways so we looked funny when we walked. My implant soon got the hang of it and corrected my balance but Nicolle wasn't so lucky. All of her senses were geared towards working on a planet where the ground is always down and is relatively nice about being there.

Nicolle was a master of multiple lives however; Space Ranger training kicked in with half-forgotten reflexes about a half hour later. And none of us threw up once on the way up here!

Most of the interior was caves. They'd been hollowed out to look a bit nicer than when the digging robots poured through the place but it still looked like one version or another of the bat cave or some underground military complex, but without the motif. Equipment was placed where it was needed and positioned so it was easy to get to.

To get inside we had to go through multiple airlocks all with nanomachine membranes inside them. They were only an inch thick so we didn't need to drown ourselves again. Inside it was something else.

Picture the inside of a cylinder ten miles long and three miles wide. All of it solid stone with veins of minerals decorating the rock. The entire thing is spinning silently in space, but there is no sense of spinning. Wherever you are, down is directly below you. To the left and right the ground gradually curves upwards until it meets overhead, east and west respectively. Look due north and south along the spin axis, the ground is flat right in front of you until you reach the rounded ends.

Overhead is a cylinder suspended in the middle where gravity doesn't apply. It is covered with super-sized LED lights and other special effects, mimicking the sun for all the plant life inside.

It took a while to notice since the place was so big but if you squint you could see the numerous robots working the interior to make our dreams a reality.

It was land, pure and simple. It was land that was going to be occupied with samples taken from our bodies and digestive tract, cultivated into seeds and germs and bacteria. To make dirt. To make plants and small animals cloned from the Electronic Book. To make our bread.

It was all we could ever think about anymore. This maniac need for something to eat that didn't taste like crap!

We were like kid Midas with a plague. Virulent and without a cure. Never once since we arrived had we ever lacked for anything out hearts could desire. Neither clothing nor entertainment nor a place to sleep. Our micro-civilization was rife with machines, automatic factories of all kinds; Skalorr hydroponics and food synthesis and acres of farms producing alien plants and animals for abundance, for Skalorr synthesis, for Skalorr plastics and chemicals; Skalorr ocean mining for metals and organics.

We had it all.

Plus a vastly increasing supply of labor. Robots to burrow and haul and smelt and fabricate, to build and farm and weave and sew.

And structures that rose into the air and dug deep into the ground and floated far out at sea on piers and pontoons. Buildings that could be poured one day and worked in the next and updated and renovated for improved efficiency in a week.

And above it all was cheap energy. Power generators from Progenitor science that made a mockery of every other method, converted to making simplistic and primitive electricity. Or of the solar satellites placed around the star. Or of our experiments with dark matter. Or of the now vastly improved and human-derived fusion power plants the held the fusing hydrogen atom in a cup of monopoles which gave the gift of plenty.

All that is but food. Like Midas with the gift to turn everything he touched to gold but cursed to starve.

All, that is, except for the little bit of human-type food to be produced on this little starship using every ounce of knowledge and technology Nicolle and I could apply with obsessive creationism.

No drug-raving lunatic ever looked after his poppy field like we guarded our first stalks of wheat!

So I can be forgiven, I think, for rushing things.

Now that we'd arrived the cylinder was soon to be covered with a tide of nanomachines of such volume that they would fill the Great Lakes of the United States - well, maybe halfway - and armor and everything else in the universe to make a spaceship go.

This new home of ours was the needle. This was the battleship and control center for everything. Surrounding it was the sphere, inside of which the needle hung like that of a 3D compass. Within the bounds of physics which even bullshit Progenitor technology had to obey the needle ship was free to move in any direction while spinning to provide sufficient gravity. Upon contact with an unknown/hostile the needle inside would point itself at the enemy presenting a minimal cross section. Should anything power its way through the armor sphere, keeping science fiction in mind it took very little imagination to image something being able to do so, the likelihood of it impacting our living space became slightly less likely.

When/if enemy fire penetrated the ship's exterior plates the tip of the needle would provide a long and thick physical barrier to slow rounds entering the ship through sheer mass. The exterior of the needle was also covered in specially shaped plating like any other armored unit designed to deflect and turn away both missiles and gun fire. There were also four towers with sharp points extending from the middle of the needle directly over and covering the habitat area protecting the needle's weak sides.

My entire defense philosophy had been to reduce the enemy's incoming firepower to less down on through deck after deck to malform any projectile and steal its penetrating power and redirect it away from valuable systems as well as our food and living areas. The sphere represented our armor, a mile thick Progenitor alloy. The armor would be effective against the lighter weapons and most meteorite impacts, but it could be eaten away if an enemy were to direct all their firepower to a small area like a water pick and cut it apart. I couldn't always depend on just the shields or armor defense, thus I must includ additional layers. Another sphere also of the same thickness covered the first, its exterior covered with five-sided pyramids in a primrose pattern with all sloops at a 45 degree angle.

Between the two was a fractal patterned layer of super strong alloys whose only purpose was to further deflect incoming fire and was further filled with oceans of impact gel in highly pressurized honeycomb cells. The beams had to be extremely strong and shaped to take a beating since I fully expected an enemy's weapons fire to go through at least five layers of the honeycomb before I could expect it to slow down.

There were a number of internally placed rotating mobile plates of armor held at an angle so that any round that penetrated would hopefully be deflected away towards where the computers wanted it to go. Another was to have the ship's armored sphere interior covered with a latticework of projecting girders that were in turn covered with trillions of layers of monofilament wire of such density it colored the interior a rainbow of silver and looked like the most complicated and comprehensive web a Spider God could dream up. They could cut, they would snag, they were a pain for the nanomachines that crawled along the wires to maintain, they were a deadly beauty.

Despite my best intention to keep the exterior smooth-like, it ended up looking like someone had crushed a car into a sphere since there was so much stuff on the outside. Some of it was there strictly for appearances sake and to look cool and confuse the enemy. Remember, layers.

Another layer of defense were countless numbers of sleek geometric mile wide "plates" that moved using overpowered gravity manipulation devices to suspend themselves over the hull. They moved as needed and reminded me of a Dyson Swarm. The more built the more layers you have. Like chain armor. When projectiles are incoming they arranged themselves in layers and used gravity, not armor, to try and slow down the projectile. They'll be cored through like apples but they'd fulfill their purpose.

Then there were the shields. All kinds, everywhere, in every configuration. Generation four powered screens for exotic energy retardation, third generation deflector shields for kinetic impact negation, triple redundancy throughout with seven backups for each, frequency overlapping, all shield phasing coordinated by the ship's battle computers, with electronic manipulations allowing for defense and offense.

Three antimatter reactors siphoning materials from a parallel dimension fueled the beast's backup engines and weapons systems. Love those antimatter bombs.

Of course it contained a high-powered computer and communication center in order to monitor the surroundings and stay in touch with anyone or thing I cared to talk to. My interface used a sub-space connection to keep in continuous contact, so I could leave at any time.

Despite its immense size the machine is also an extremely maneuverable craft with anti-gravity and counter-gravity fields that allow for stable and quiet flight.

Unlike most conventional ships, my Star Cruiser could manipulate its structure to create extra room for increased carrying capacity as well as entry ways both on and off the ship. Her ever-changing infrastructure made her very valuable seeing as she was adaptable to whatever was necessary. Given just a few moments warning the ship will adapt itself to be able to travel deep underwater, far into space, the surface of stars and traverse the altitudes on the most weather-worrisome planet.

Well, maybe not water travel. It was too big for the Earth's oceans. But maybe I would enter Fluidic Space and tussle with Species 8472 or something. A thick nebula can be like an ocean and their might be swimming lifeforms there? I don't know, maybe? I'd included the option with a list of abilities I wanted and the machines had done their best to fulfill those desires.

It also comes in handy for when I land the ship on a planet.

Our new home came complete with a stock of extra clothes modeled after various fictional shows, but also contains some civilian clothes as well for whatever the future may bring me.

It also has a cloaking device that literally makes the ship invisible.

I review the ship's schematics with my mind in a flash and upload another round of upgrades into the ship's computers.

In simulation it worked great. The hull would be turned to Swiss cheese while any rounds that survived to breach the interior would not have enough momentum to do any damage to the needle even if they managed to tap it.

The seats installed were quite overly engineered for all of that.

For defenses and for a little decoration the exterior was covered with these long red spines that had lightning coursing up and down between them.

Space lightning!

Also had to have the Catalyst. It wasn't a big metal sphere without a death star Catalyst.

But first I had to redesign it so that it could unfold from the interior where it was safe, also add more redundancy with multiple and smaller units, protected with armor. It seemed like a great place to dock ships I'd maybe want to get rid of later. Then of course since it already looked like a mouth it seemed to make sense at the time to add a tractor beam and fabricators so that it could up and eat everything that was in the way or create anything it wanted but it needed at least two extendable limbs to hold the thing while it was being created or to grasp at stuff. Then of course we needed a mobile space dock for our space navy and some place I could put/study/incarcerate/store any tech/ships/prisoners/shinnies I found so I added this big ring around the place attached at four points and overloaded the thing with weapons and big armored orbital factories to build and launch things . . .

Did I just make a mini-Unicron? Yes I did.

Can it transform? Not into a humanoid, otherwise yes.

Did I forget to mention that my Nano-Ship tech can also grow in size given sufficient time?

-000-

With some trepidation, and not a small degree of twitching, Nicolle watched as I took the blueberry muffin, removed the wax paper and cut it in half from the top down while it was still steaming from the oven. Margarine was applied equally to both sides which were then placed on individual plates. Breakfast was served.

This affair was being recorded.

"Bon appetit" I said with a smile.

"Bon appetit," she replied as we both scooped up our very first serving of pure human food.

Together, we took a very large bite.

It was good.

-/-

Getting out of the solar system was easy. All you had to do was strap on a pair of thrusters and GO!

You'd get there in the end.

The rocket ships from Buzz Lightyear of Star Command are NOT ROCKETSHIPS!

An Andromeda-class starship does NOT produce flame.

Surprise!

It produces an insane amount of thrust and as a result of this it also produces a perfect blue light. Blue like in a Bunsen burner or the deep blue of the sea or the kind of blue you see on a perfect cloudless sky. They were electrical and crystalic fusion powered. There was a lot of science and technological wizardry involved which spelled out some other universes concept of quantum science/magic. It made a nice looking science fiction engine room with everything wired up to a simple plate at the bottom of the rocket engine that was where the wonder happens.

They called the final component the Glow Plug.

I kept expecting it to look like the flaming rockets from the black and white films but it never happens. Just one "continuous" color streaming "continuously" from the within the end of the rocket all the way out to a few miles where the color simply stops and putters out where reality makes it not-happen anymore.

There was no variation in the color intensity from beginning to end. There was no bright spot where the light was generated from the backside of the rocket with a gradual fade-out on the last five feet of the tip. Just one solid color. One! 1. That's it. Nothing else. Nada, zip, end of story.

Seeing that in real life was just amazing.

It is the most perfect color of blue that is light I have ever seen, ever!

I cannot emphasize this enough and I'm probably being very bad at describing it. I needed to make some new words to describe what I'm looking at here.

The only way to get anything like that is if a kid drew a rocket and then used only one color, blue, to make the rocket exhaust. One long streak and you're done. No flashy-flashy fake UFO with grainy video crap.

Or in a rainbow. It was a very rainbow-y blue.

It produced thrust without heat because it was tuned to create only one type of energy and none of the others. So there was no bleed off, no excess. And that was it.

There was no way in nature, no method then known by man, to create such a perfect blue light.

I know because I tried.

This wasn't some system or idea that someone had sufficiently modified and advanced to do this. It was an outside context and completely original invention. Someone had to imagine and create the thing entirely from scratch from concept to finish.

The worst part of it was that it was so gawdamned easy to build that if you create a one hundred page pamphlet consisting of large text and simple build-it pictures to every human being who even knows what a screwdriver is, it was guaranteed that at least half of them could build the thing in a week with parts from the hardware store, powered by electric potatoes.

Why hadn't someone invent this before? Too simple to believe it would work, probably.

Trying to explain Light-alter-thrust skews one's idea of physics out of shape. It's no good for anything else except for the explanation and refinement of some useless aspects of the Unified Theory of Everything and making the kind of mad-science technologies you see on TV. Like upgrades to your counter-gravity devices. Which is like AM verses FM. I have antigravity devices, they have counter gravity devices. Mine are more useful applied to big things and getting them off the ground and in the crushing of things; theirs are more useful in small areas. Mine use big generator to make a giant field like a magnet that attracts everything in a sphere. Theirs can make gravity in one direction and be used to make pressor and tractor beams. Plus deck plating. You know, so that your head doesn't get sucked into the gravity generator of the deck above you.

You'd have to be an alien supercomputer with an inclination towards some strange studies of phenomena with a zero out of place to get a grip on it and it still left the Xeno-Commander and Professor Theopolis scratching their metaphorical heads.

So my Hailey Rockets get an upgrade out of all proportions to expected results. Good for me.

Too bad the hyperdrive didn't work in this reality, but scientific data and shinies were still scientific data and shinies.

Still, thrusting away all day and night and yearlong would not get us to the nearest star in anywhere near good time. Doesn't matter how good your rockets are. There's still thirty thousand light years between us and the next star. Just for amusement I had the ship's onboard computer calculate how long it would take. It determined that the ship's calendar would be more usefully kept by carbon-14 dating.

The ship kept an acceleration of one gee. Inside the needle it seemed as if all the flat land gradually became the side of some hill, with North being uphill. The land was shaped to provide various levels and there was even a number of rivers that flowed downwards to pool at the bottom. We had an ecology.

We circumnavigated the planet that had been our home for the last 83.15 earth days, scanners fully deployed as I scheduled a full engine and sensors test with the new Tier 3 systems. The results came back negative, other than a few space rocks there were no alien artifacts to be found. Nothing hidden behind a cloak. Nothing trans-dimensionally localized other than the solar system itself. No pockets of temporal disturbances. No wormhole activity. No dark matter, antimatter, strange matter or whatever-the-matter. Nothing but what I'd created.

Disappointing.

Finished with the complete scanning of the planet and near-space the ship was then guided out of the gravity well of the planet of Skalorr. Six Hailey rockets in a cluster on our rear end shining like the spotlights in Vegas. Here, under the electronic eyes of all the telescopes and surface radar, we carried out our final integrity checks.

I then released the testing Spaceballs Scout with a thought.

The probe's Very Intelligent program had freedom of thought in escape and evasion, survival within certain designated limitations, and other capabilities. The machine set about checking seals, instrumentation, life support systems, applicators, weapons systems, in amongst other peripheral tasks. Solar cells were activated, amongst other methods of acquiring power and were tested.

The VI worked continuously, adding all the ancillary equipment using its wide array of nanobots while Nicolle and I observed it from within our starship. Within three days the Sphere was ready. Then the engines were put online for the first time following further testing for the first FTL jump.

The idea was simple but initial testing could only be done in space free of gravity. It was the first time in weeks that I was glad I had my shard for the use and abuse of manipulate microscopic matter. In a near total vacuum I was able to create a one molecule shift in the relative position of the testing sphere. One smoot, in other words. It was actual teleportation, worlds removed but essentially the same which had been done in the lab of my home dimension for the last three decades.

But what good was it to be able to move a Spaceball Scout the space of one molecule?

When the tests came back positive I started to tinker to increase the distance. 143 miles seemed to be the maximum. It could be done with objects of any size, even data from photons and electrons provided that both the unit sending the information and the unit receiving information knew where the other was, a trivial matter to set up as the machines exchanged information.

So what would happen to the machine if I had it teleport again and again in succession?

When I increased the rate of smoots and repeated it millions of times per second it was like the test Scout was moving faster than the boundaries of the imagination could expand!

It wasn't true movement, but it sure acted like it. It went so damn fast. No limit, no inertia. There was nothing holding us below the speed of light now. I had super space travel without inertia. At one point such a thing would have been cause for celebration!

Now it was just another checkmark as I grinned wider than the Joker himself.

The Scout came back and was taken aboard the ship. Further testing was done. The ship was again updated with but a thought from my mind. The nanomachines made the necessary adjustments to include the Smoots Drive, the smallest amount of movement possible.

From there it was the simplest exercise to locate a suitable asteroid and arrive there in moments. The anti-gravity engines were put to the test as the ship gave us sufficient drag and changed our momentum while the BLOSC Hailey rockets fired course corrections. The tractor beam from the Unicron-eater was deployed as the armored teeth unfolded, eager for a bite of its first meal. We matched orbit and then the ship bit into the giant rock itself with a CHRUNCH! and then we used up considerable amounts of energy slowing down the asteroid so it was no longer spinning.

The ship managed to extract enough rock from the first bite to keep it busy for a few minutes. Like a man with an apple.

Then I deployed the Scout.

Working from a distance, the Scout scanned the asteroid along with my ship to map its exact composition. Satisfied that all above-ground surveying was completed, it then teleported itself into a cavern inside the asteroid where space was at a premium. It was a tight fit but that was all right. The Scout was unconcerned, its positioning within the rock was exact. In another moment the Scout used its sensors to map the internal layout. In another moment the sphere was back in its cradle, having teleported itself there directly.

The Scout then teleported back into the asteroid and used its Smoots Drive to teleport out a large section of rock into space just big enough to keep the Unicron-eater busy.

Over the next few hours chunks of rock from the asteroid were cut out with the Smoots Drive and teleported aboard, where a more exact system teleported the individual atoms to create stockpiles of metals the ship hungrily absorbed and used to rebuild itself and grow while arming itself with weapons of all kinds. In the process of teleporting the material it was purified to an accuracy of 100%.

Efficiency upgrade acquired.

While using the Smoots Drive to make hash out of Star Trek's transporter, I had continued to experiment. It was a very versatile system. Sending the working Scout back to Skalorr to gather the necessary chemicals from all over the world, the VI refined its methods by strip-mining the atmosphere over chemical plants and other factories.

We could even use the method to take DNA samples from the bodies of living beings and place nanomachines within. All without side effects.

I developed a new method of gathering information from living beings. The Scouts and the ship were now equipped with launchers that shot micro-ships, each no bigger than a needle that would traverse the world under cloak before inserting themselves into the brains either through self-teleportation or by digging through the tissues using nanomachines. Once there it would form a gentile link to the brain and acquire knowledge.

In the meantime work on the ship proceeded at a fantastic pace. Now the size of a small nation the asteroid broke apart as the last of it was consumed and turned into ingots of metal for storage and use.

Teleportation of materials for construction had proven to be such a superior method that other methods were now considered obsolete. The only reason I kept the fabricator bots around was that they were a versatile, time honored, time tested design for the building of things and I still needed something to go places to build things. So other than a little mental waffling, the fabricator units were still top dogs.

As we moved through the solar system on the way out we ran into/collected supplies and the odd meteor that had been left for us to acquire and finish building the ship. With each addition from the various orbital factories the ship quickly reconfigured itself again and again, pulling in components to keep them safe and deploying others as we headed into deepest space.

The majority of the ship was constructed of ordinary elements well known to the human race, but in such arrangements that many of them had tensile and compression and hardness strengths up to fourteen times stronger than diamond itself. At the same time the Matter Materializers were working on transmuting pure energy into matter one subatomic particle at a time. From there it was up to the Smoots Drive to rearrange the insides of the atom by teleporting its various super strings around to create new and unique forms of matter that had only existed in comic books.

The going was slow however.

Most of the stuff created tended to be explosively volatile. So we created plenty of new explosives. Just shoot/teleport missiles to an enemy's position and the Smoots Drive will rearrange your enemies face into something volatile and exploooosions worthy. But make sure you retrieve your missile before anything happens. That way you can reused it for next time.

The newly enlarged starship came equipped with two landing and launch bays on the exterior ring for six vessels all of a size of the Titanic, each of which were equipped to reconfigure themselves to transport as little as one or as many as a thousand people through space in comfort to various planets. Multi-level facilities for living in included food, sleeping quarters, restrooms, equipment storage, workshops, robot service stations, ship stores and so forth. A main room was included, where all of the piloting, communications, reconnaissance, and other operations were carried out.

The new Star Cruiser, now at full size and fully equipped was now complete.

SSC – Skalorr Star Cruiser.

Thus the ship was named the SSC Food Critic.

End of arc 1.


	8. Arc 2 Chapter 1

Even with umpteen amounts of entertainment traveling in the Food Critic through the universe was boring. When not training or learning we spent a lot of time playing video games or watching TV or checking on Professor Theopolis reports of the goings-on at the Skalorr System. Computer Green was generating an impressive number of upgrades for our sci-fi technologies. Together the Color Computers were working out well under its guidance.

About the only thing we did that was close to sexual was this thing I did two months ago where I removed Nicolle's ovaries. The originals went into stasis. In their place were artificial ones that provided all of the benefits and none of the negatives. No blood, mood swings, or "times of the month." All that was regulated. The originals were then placed in a safe in her room.

I'd broached the concept of becoming fuck buddies a few more times. But Nicolle turned me down flat, using psychology of all reasons!

There were a lot of arguments that occurred between us but most of our problems boiled down to the fact that without the Xeno-Commander or my Worm Shard she would be dead. Nicolle was completely dependent upon me. I was strong, good looking, unfathomably rich by the standards of earth and had more power than any human being she'd ever known. I was a nice guy. There should have been no problems having oceans of women at my feet. But Nicolle detested all concepts of a "kept" or "trophy wife" which registered on supreme disgust.

I could tell she was fighting the urge as much as I didn't want to and I was willing to bet our new starship that the one responsible for us being here was wondering what the hold-up was. It's not like she could get pregnant if she didn't want too. So with nothing better to do we ended up training, being a little neurotic, beating the crap out of each other to work out our frustrations, a lot, followed by several days where we couldn't stand to be in each other's company because our feelings were hurt that the other beat us black and blue.

So we were bored, there was too much intimacy, Nicolle was dependent on me, and we were unable to sever the relationship.

Discontented we were.

I have a Xeno-Commander with umpteen levels of computer power and was a shining example of the benefits of a Transhumanist. I still didn't get women.

Well, I did, sometimes, let me tell you those pheromones are pretty potent to a male's psyche.

We made for the nearest main-sequence G or K type stars hoping to get lucky. From time to time we found something interesting to look at. Nothing that the Progenitors hadn't seen before whilst traveling the stars but it helped us nail down this universe's physics. The first yellow-orange sun proved without habitable planets. So did the eighth and the ninth. A region thin with life.

The view of the outside universe was always different. Nicolle never found anything familiar. We needed new star charts.

Hell, I'd take on a pirate right about now.

Almost as if summoned by my very thoughts we found a thing in space.

Bluestone was so named because it was a supergiant star that was blue. There were two gas giants, a dozen planets, 57 assorted moons and an asteroid belt made from a planet that broke apart for some reason and lots of debris.

But what was interesting was that this thing appeared almost as soon as we got done mapping the place. I ordered the ship closer to take a look. And by closer I mean being about 249 million miles away from the thing where the speed of light takes about five minutes to get to us and not so close that we could play bumper cars with the thing.

A few Spaceball Scout were sent to investigate.

"It looks like some weird space mirror," Nicolle commented. "Oh look! A spaceship!"

Yeah. A spaceship. Whoop dee fucking doo…

"It's the Proteus," I grumpily declared, bringing up the necessary information in another ten foot hologram next to the ones we were using to observe events.

You know how in the movies and anime they have this big palaces and ships with interiors so big you could walk a mecha through them without a problem? We were in the living room of such a place.

"So, we're going to go over there, right?" Nicolle asked quickly and with bright-eyed enthusiasm.

"No."

"What? But . . . ? Food!"

"Nope."

She jumps up and flames her green hands on. "FOOD!"

Not impressed. I pointed to the screen. "ROB."

She pauses in mid stalk and the flames go out. "Oh, right." She looks suitably sheepish.

"Besides we've got probes for this sort of thing."

Taking a more active role we each take control of one of the Scouts and send it forwards through the big hole in space. Two more Spaceball Scouts set up a thick communications cable between them with one going over to act as a relay through the time bubble thing.

The two probes approach the ship and it's just like in the movies. Our sensors are going crazy as more bubbles through time show up and fade away.

"Let's make this quick. We don't know how long ROB is going to give us." I sent my probe hurling towards an airlock. After a quick scan it uses its Smoots Drive to jump inside where it falls to the ground. "Gravity's present."

The Spaceball releases some nanomachines to assemble four legs with wheels and a pair of long arms. Nicolle's Scout follows soon after but adapts her gravity devices to maintain flight while assembling two miniature Gatling guns.

Strolling through the place brought back all kinds of fond memories of going to the movies with my parents.

"Computer console," Nicolle announced, pointing it out on her targeting screen.

"I see it," I said as I rolled my machine up to it.

It took but a moment to assemble and distribute the nanites into the high-tech wonder using the Smoots Drive. Didn't matter that parts of the computer were trashed. Pour in enough nanites and they can reconstruct anything. In moments we had computer access and was downloading lots and lots of lovely data.

"The crew were killed about five years ago," I told her after a moment's investigation. "The alien spiders are onboard, I've also got some medical data on them. We're going to want samples."

"Yes, samples, good. But what about the food?" Nicolle asked again.

"There's a hothouse onboard. But I doubt that the food stores survived all this time."

Actually the food stores survived fine all right. In a few minutes we had a nice production line going with the Scouts using their Smoots Drive to jump past the prowling spiders and into the kitchens and locked refrigerators, teleporting the morsels out. Where another group of Scouts would physically herd the cargo through the space bubble, to where another group of Scouts would teleport them onboard. Also every plant in the botanical gardens had had its fruit picked and seeds harvested. The spiders had eaten most of the animals except for the insects.

I was eating PEACHES!

There was actually an impressive number of robots onboard. The ones with the weapons had been taken apart and not a few of the others had been turned to scrap metal. We got our hands on a Rambler-Crane Series 14 Robot. Plus two gardeners that could be fixed and taken with the rest of the loot. They looked like spiders. Huge spiders, with round bodies almost perfectly smooth and eight long legs, tentacles really.

"What about earth?"

That was one of the first thing's I'd first checked. "The star charts match the ones Ranger Mira Nova memorized from the Buzz Lightyear universe. They match that universe," I pointed at the screen with the image of the time bubble and the ship on the other side. "But not this one."

There was also the fact that I was pretty sure that Nicolle and I were in the wrong part of the universe to use them.

Nicolle practically collapse into herself. She falls down onto the couch and hugs herself. "Damn."

A few more time bubbles appeared and disappeared while we worked. I lost a dozen Scouts exploring the things and the stuff on the other side. Including one version of this solar system where the planet that had been broken up in this timeline is intact. The space spiders were getting more creative attacking my machines. There was no sign of the alien ship.

Proteus.

The Lost In Space universe.

It felt like I was trying to snatch the cheese from out of a bear trap.

I didn't know if this was the same ship the Robinson Family will find in the future history, but I decided to play it safe. The intact computer would help them and not just the navigation data. There was a more updated version of their hyperdrive for me to play around with, along with a hyperdrive tracker, plus lots more information and designs on the entire ship and all its technological goodies. I left a pile of radioactive cores for them to find in a crate near the entryway, removed the robot remote control device from the remaining machine but left the robot at the entryway like the butler waiting to welcome the master home, plus disabled the self-destruct and did some ship maintenance.

I felt totally justified a few minutes later when, my Scouts returning from the other side with a few hundred Space Spiders in energy cages, the time bubble disappeared with a puff of paradox.

"Well, that's that." I muttered. I closed the window.

Mmm hum," Nicole murmured as she chomped down on a stalk of celery.

The next few hours were a literal gastronomical delight as we ate human foods that we'd thought we'd never eat again.

-000-

You wouldn't believe the amount of tension that can unravel over a bowl of ice cream.

-000-

Six days later and two more solar systems behind us I was looking at the Space Spiders while they looked at me.

After they got over their "WERAWERRR!" they calmed down quite a bit. Especially after I started feeding them regularly.

The terrarium consisted mostly of a the same ceramic-armored compound used as reentry armor in the Diamond Leviathan with four walls and a ceiling made up of pure energy. There was a long hollow log facsimile, a number of arranged rocks on a gravel floor, chains and toys hanging from the ceiling, a jungle gym. Should the energy walls fail the lack of power would immediately cause real walls to fall into place in a microsecond. It kind of felt like I was reproducing the Aliens Resurrection movie where the military was breeding the monsters.

I wasn't all that concerned. They were smart, but so are lots of animals. It was kind of like keeping piranha in an aquarium at home.

You can get over a lot of your old inclinations about food when you've been eating weird tasting crap for eighty days. Nicolle was eating an onion, raw.

"What are you going to do with them?" she asked as she takes another bite.

"Don't know. Feed them people I don't like probably." I shrug.

She stops eating. "You know, somehow that doesn't bother me."

"Odd, isn't it?"

She shrugs. "It's a savage universe."

"Yup." I nod.

A collection of mice cloned from some remains collected from the Proteus appears within the energy cell. They scream. The Space Spiders pounce and eat them all in a few seconds before crawling back into the piles of rock arrayed about the terrarium.

"Wanna come back to my place?"

"Yes."


	9. Arc 2 Chapter 2

A few solar systems later we'd thoroughly tested out our new hyperdrive. It was inaccurate as fuck, you just aim it at a given direction and hoped that when you stopped you were within an (Astronomical Unit) AU at where you wanted to be. Not so bad when you have the Smoots Drive to get you the remaining million-million miles you wanted to go. Still annoying.

What with the food and all things were looking up. Tension was way down. She'd finally decided to be my girlfriend. Sighting reasons mostly about not getting a better catch, this side of a genie's lamp, or something like that. Whatever.

In fact we were quite happy.

I even started doing things other than study my brains out.

For fun I created a real-life game of Planetary Annihilations. It was the one I knew best. Within the confines of our living habitat we'd each choose one of 24 different commanders just like the ones from the game to control and introduce to the field. These were only about a foot high however. The playing field was a rather large mockup filled with lots of dirt and rocks and rivers and model trainset parts and things like that. The computer would randomly place the Commanders down onto the playing field and then the fun would begin.

It was the most fun we'd had in a while. The stealth systems on the machines were the same as the ones used on the bigger versions. You couldn't even see your enemies units with the mark one eyeball until you broke through their jamming.

We wasted a few good weeks playing around and making improvements.

Then one day we found a communications satellite.

It was solid.

It looked like two giant nuts screwed onto either end of a large metal sphere which was itself almost a mile across. There were no exterior decorations and it looked like it had been built in a factory and then sealed together, never to be opened.

No user serviceable parts.

Of course that didn't stop me from sending a swarm of Spaceball Scouts at the thing and covering it with nanobots.

Which was at the point it started screaming on every frequency and a few more that I didn't even know existed.

I'll call that the alarm.

It then started sending signals other than white noise. All kinds, from the very large and complicated to the simple and the dumb. We recorded everything. Basic Very Intelligent systems on both sides having recognized the other knowledge was exchanged. A First Contact Package from Earth with little embellishment was all that was needed – thankyou SETI. In exchange I also got a package filled with similar knowledge, including but not limited to the physiological makeup of these sapient's and their language.

I knew a bit about them now and they knew a bit more about me. I didn't really want to do that. Obviously, if an enemy knew your psychological makeup they'd know which way you'll jump.

I ran it through an isolated system, decoded the message while looking for hacks and viruses, didn't find any but some of the programming was sufficiently alien to keep me scratching my head for days, was soon looking at one of a number of communications options. The first was for a species that used actual radar for its main sensory apparatus. The next was for underwater creatures that didn't see by light at all. Another used artificial scents, probably for some plant variety. Next was some kind of magnetic/electrical space/time pulse modulation for silicon creatures. Another flashed lights and colors like a special effects gizmo gone berserk. Plus seven more. There was a relatively cheap non-sentient adaptation program to help with the programming of the software to facilitate two way communications that was just as advanced as the stuff I reverse engineered out of the Tiberius-Space Ranger suit, thank the programmer gods. Finally I got to one that could be used by humans, copying and keeping the rest of their translation programs for later.

A room was prepared off to the side of the living room. Appearances being important, the room was dressed up to look like the throne room for the next big Flash Gordon movie. Say what you will about the stupid film and the other series, I just couldn't help but fall in love with the scenery and the costumes used in the 1980s movie (being a young, stupid hormonally driven teenager it was the costumes the women wore I was interested in). A floor of black granite big enough to play major league football and baseball on at the same time, inset with artificial precious stones in the arrangement of a generic galaxy that looked like the SpaceBattlers website icon. Lots of reds and orange decorations, rugs, hanging tapestries, most of them depicting parts and pieces of art taken from the covers of my favorite books and movie posters. On either side of the room were twelve columns, 24 total, of flashing neon tubes and lights, the kind of tubes used to decorate the Command Center from the first Power Rangers Movie. Plus a large, long stairway up to the throne itself. One step per ten feet of walking.

I am resplendent in my super suit, which Nicolle spritzed up a bit with bigger slabs of armor with a short black cape and with bigger boots. Not that I really needed it. The modifications I'd made to my body over the last four months have turned me into a powerful man. I was impressive no matter what I wore.

As usual the blue parts of the original super suit design were red instead. However we'd replaced the "V" pattern in the front with a gear icon with a stalk of wheat in it, representing the power of industry and growth. I had a larger version of the symbol presented on the wall behind me where the throne sat at its base.

I left the helmet on, concealing my facial features.

The holographic screen flashed into existence when all the costumes and makeup were ready. The being that appeared before me was that of a large, fat, alien whale floating in a tank seen from above, I think. It was bluish green, had 64 tendril-like limbs extending from its round body, each ending with an eyeball and mouthpiece with a beak. It surrounded itself with three large computer consoles. It undoubtedly used the base 8 system, had an odd sort of concept of up and down/left and right. It's body had this patch of fabric in the middle of several colors with bits of metal in it – probably clothes, alien underwear and badges of office.

"Greetings Sapient, welcome to the Exchange. This individual is known as Tetris, In-Barraza-Dig Alien, omnivore, dextrose-molecular food chain based. You are obviously a First Contact Species. Query: did you invent FTL yourself, salvage, or have help?"

"Greetings Sapient, glad to be here. This individual is known as NitroNorman, rank of Supreme Planetary Annihilations Commander, Human Alien, omnivore, dextrose-molecular food chain based. Answer: Non-answer," I replied. No data is good data.

"Very well. I greet you Commander NitroNorman to the greater galaxy. Let it be known that this relay is placed there for Galactic Communications. By being there you infringe upon Galactic Communications space without invitation. As this is your first time communicating with the galaxy at large all criminal acts have been temporarily suspended pending further investigation." It then transmitted a bunch of data which was mostly a list of do and do-nots. "The Exchange exists to further communications and trade. You have fulfilled the first part. You now have an account. Do you now wish to shop, buy, sell, trade?"

"I require access to the Exchange," I said without hesitation.

"Expensive. What do you have to trade with?"

"I have knowledge of worlds you've never seen before. Seeds from various ecologies. Appliances of all kinds. Entertainment devices, games and the machines to play them on. Servant robots and space-borne biological weapons. What does your Exchange have to offer?"

"A great deal."

-000-

The meaning in those words were more literal than you can know.

I had to fork over enough gold to pay for the exchange rate and for someone to come pick it up. But I got my hands on a basic Galactic Encyclopedia in basic Galactic, the artificial language everyone used. Everything had a price and everything was up for sale.

It was a good thing I'd read about these kinds of empires in books before.

All the species who had access to the Exchange turned the galaxy into one big barter's market. It was the internet fed super alien steroids. It was a pyramid scheme designed to put the new guys on the bottom working in sweat shops. You had access to all the knowledge of the universe, for a fee, but then you had to figure out how to acquire the technology to put that knowledge to use. Most species had no money, most species were in debt, indentured to other species and had loans to pay off. How they got out of those situations was the only kind of knowledge us New Guys were interested in and the one thing you couldn't buy. They guarded their knowledge jealously and hunted down blabbermouths with nuclear weapons.

But if you had enough money to tempt the greedy and enough weapons to fight the other guy off you could get your manipulators on absolutely anything that you wanted.

Nobody told the other where their home worlds are, of course, not until after they had colonized a few dozen worlds and had them well-fortified – or at all. Most species came into the Exchange as client-races. For the million-plus years the Exchange has been operating only five other races came to know of the Exchange on their own and four of those were conquered outright, the other exterminated.

Of course the little guy on the bottom worked the big guy on the top. For money, for food, for services and protection from poachers. This is how the rich stayed rich.

Of course I didn't need any of that. I was self-employed. That's why I paid for my knowledge in cash.

Still, I thought it would be best to retreat to another solar system and fortify myself until I had gone over what I bought and seen about applying any upgrades I could wiggle out of it. Using just my hyperspace drive it only took me three days to get there and I made sure to stop a few times and take the most roundabout path I could, discovering a few more solar systems with new worlds in the process.

By the time the first alien fleet came around sniffing for a taste of "the new guys in the black" I'd already set up shop. I kept my factories and as much of my tech underground as much as possible to keep prying eyes from observing my secrets while I populated the world's equator's with orbital factories. With three planets and a gas giant all to myself for two weeks I was well fortified to deal with any unexpected "guests."

And it was a good thing I did too. Looks like sub-space tracking was a common feature of this universe. Good to know.

The fleet that came was 36 units strong. Two were identified as super-dreadnaughts, the rest organized into three groups with the usual cruiser, battleship, patrol boat, carrier, gunship, troop transport combinations. Plus another 3 dozen units of assorted craft, a number of that looked like mining vessels, a few that looked like a carton of eggs with rockets on the backside that I tentatively identified as cargo and factory production units for food and parts. Call it 63 vessels in total.

They came out of hyperspace using the same reality warping physics as the Robinson family used in the Lost In Space movie. Exactly on the same spot in which I came out of hyperspace days ago. These guys seemed able to navigate with pinpoint accuracy.

"Make sure we get some of those upgrades," Nicole told me.

As soon as they appeared in real-space thousands of Spaceball Scouts lying in wait teleported right next to the enemy units and started spraying them down with gallons of nanomachines. More Scouts appeared every second until the starships were virtually surrounded and Nano-coated. It took an hour to wrestle control of their advanced systems, fighting off anti-nanomachine swarms while doing so. Most of that was done by the Xeno-Commander since it happened too fast and covered too much activity for me and Nicolle even with all our enhancements to keep track of. Us mere mortals focused on the big picture instead while the machine played devil with the details.

We made a pretty good team.

Meanwhile I was drowning in data.

New designs for ships, computers, armor, weapons, atmosphere generators. These guys looked like humanoid Komodo Dragons with long necks and bigger heads with more bony armor to protect their brains. Kind of like the 1998 baby Godzilla's from New York.

These guys were pirates, called the Tazim Aliens, ex-military, carnivores, cold blooded, dextrose-molecular food chain based . . .

Lizard people.

In Space!

Commander NitroNorman VS the Space Lizard People.

Somebody call Stann Lee! His characters are missing from the set!

They did not enjoy me filling their starships with so much bullshit nanomachines that it looked like the flood. But what could they do? I was like a comic book hacker, everything they had was mine.

I got a few Spaceball Scouts into the ships and managed to Smoots Drive teleport the whole populous of Tazim into a holding area, removing whatever clothes and technological goodies they had on them with item specific teleporters.

Let's see . . . a cursory evaluation revealed a king's ransom in goods.

Numbers wise I had 24,243 Tazim in my holding cells, 1,247 alien slaves of breeding age that did most of the unpleasant and dangerous tasks, plus a whole assortment of food animals and pets. Also eatables. Farms of genetically and molecularly altered food plants for a variety of species requirements – read that as the Spice Trade like what went on in India.

Their computers knew much about this universe's physics, comparative xenosapientology, galactic social customs, chemistry, biology, astronomy with secure starcharts for planets with suitable bio-environments for a variety of lifeforms including for human beings such as ourselves within the surrounding 20,000 light years, I might wish to visit those — all the factual things one can learn from the Exchange but which I now don't have to pay for.

Tech wise we had an interesting but non-working helium-3 synthesis plant, 140,000 metric tons of deuterium fuel – per ship, synthesized chemicals, semi-living spacesuits, anti-aging drugs, genetically tailored narcotics, faster than lightspeed tachyonic communicators, a working hospital programed with 200 of the most populous local species and good for servicing 2,000 more, war-grade cybernetics, and a long list of upgrades for an Anti-Matter Matter power plant with modular attachments for propulsion and weapons uses.

Antimatter was a very popular commodity.

Being ex-military and pirates the amount of porn and sex toys found within their quarters was somewhat staggering, yet not surprisingly so. Also a lot of the alien stuff was just alien stuff. They had special tools to clean their bodies just like we had the luffa. I transferred all that to the holding cells.

Now for the slaves.

They looked like blue six legged monkeys with shells. They came from a heavy gravity world and the largest was about the size of my housecat from back home. They had no head or neck but a small collection of six inch tentacles that they covered with a scrap of cloth. Their body was covered in a thick shell like a turtle with six openings in it on top with large red retractable eyes pointed in every direction.

The group consisted of genetically bioengineered Brood Mothers that gave birth to specialized castes of Workers, Thinkers, Drones, Defenders and large numbers of Technicians. They've been slaves so long to various galactic powers that they've evolved into the roll. They have a group mind, which altogether makes them smart enough to qualify as merely extremely mentally disabled.

Rather than as being normally mentally disabled, where you're functional enough not to be confined to a home for the simple-minded. That is if we were working on the human scale here.

New Master? Old Master Defeated? one of the creatures thought-projected when I approached their energy holding cells. It wasn't really words but it was how my brain interpreted the message.

One more thing, being telepathic enabled them to take orders from any being regardless of species and made them that much more valuable.

"Do you know what freedom is?" I asked.

What freedom?

Yeah, this is one of those grey areas. Like the house elves in Harry Potter.

The Blue Slaves – they really didn't have any other name – didn't know what freedom is. I tried to explain it, at length; they sat down and thought about it, and after three days they decided that I was a slave!

After all I had to take care of them. I had to run the ship, pay taxes, look after the ammunitions stores so that we had weapons when we needed them, make sure everyone got fed. I had responsibilities. All they had to do was eat, sleep, do their jobs and have fun. After all it's worked for them so well over the last 2 million plus years that theirs was now the most populous in the galaxy and they were tough enough to survive anything on almost any kind of planet and even live for short amounts of time in the vacuum of space just by eating rocks and photosynthesizing on starlight. All because they survived everything every abusive master down through history could throw at them and pass on their genes.

I'd call them simple folks but that would be wrong. Not just on moral grounds. Their group mind gave them access to memories almost 3 million years long. They remembered what it was like living on a planet on their own when food was scarce where they were on the verge of extinction before they were discovered and turned into slaves. Now they mostly referred to that as The Bad Time. Now they had plenty of food and a never ending series of masters. Good Master, or Bad Master, or Dead Master, or Good Master and Master's Mate and Master's Scary Pets, which is how they thought of me.

They had more loyalty to the ship they were working on, because survival is key and space is an absolute bitch, than to the aliens who were supposed to be their owners.

And that was that.

I let them loose and put them in charge of the living section of the ship and the gardens. I had to portion off several sections for the alien plants and animals for cultivation so the guys could have enough food. I wanted to call them something other than Turtle-Monkeys because I was not a fan of Ben 10's naming scheme but I couldn't think of anything better. I didn't need to tell them how to take care of my plants and food animals. Their long memories of experience and deductive reasoning allowed them to figure it out faster than I could talk. These guys were on the job so well I almost accused them of time traveling so they could arrange things in advance.

They were just that good.

Back on the Exchange I found that the might of right, ruled. Also Nicolle was looking at available fashions for mammalian bipeds. Metal woven cloth created from a silicon-based equivalent to a silkworm seemed to be a big thing.

As far as the rest of the universe was concerned everything the Tazim owned was now mine. Their ships, their bank accounts, their debts too.

Which is how I got contacted by Galactic Bank.

Since I was new on the scene Galactic Bank had very kindly bought up the Tazim's various tabs and put them into one account, right next to my own, when their bureaucracy opened up an account for my species and myself in particular. I hadn't asked, but they sent me the paperwork anyway. I was free to pick my new credit cards up at any nearby civilized planet with a Galactic Bank local planetary branch.

Apparently the Tazim were in debt for $1,876,051.972 Galactic Credits and change with compound interests. Galactic Bank was wondering how I wanted to pay this debt.

…

"You can't be serious," I declared in amazement.

I was currently talking to a local representative, a blue praying mantis that had decorated its shell with over a thousand tiny black chrome metal spoons. Fashion, eh?

"Not at all," the being on the other end of the line declared. "One of the reasons it was allowed for the Tazim to buy up your location data was that these sapient's were in very serious debt. By sending off this suicide fleet they were able to mitigate twenty percent of the interest and free up the accounts for the rest of their species. Planets, especially viable planets with an already available work force, are worth a minimum of 80 million credits on the market. Plus there are usually more astral bodies around the star for exploitation and, depending on the technological development of the resident species, could be worth as little as three times more. If they'd acquired your home world data they could have sold it at auction and eliminated their debt entirely and come out quite well ahead, or conquered your world for themselves.

"It was a simple gamble, one that the Tazim lost and one that provided the rest of the universe with some simple entertainment and data about you and your fighting abilities."

Obviously. Damn but these people are too good by half!

"Now that you have conquered the fleet the transfer of ownership of the debt is quite clear. You have also benefited. You now own a quite functional fleet of warships and support vessels, along with the crew and the warriors needed to operate and fight for you. You have gained immense wealth in the forms of both knowledge and technology, beyond the exchange-rate for straight-up purchasing the same from the Exchange. The benefit is all to you."

I get it.

Oh, I so get it!

The villains already conquered this universe. They then imposed taxes on everyone else.

"But according to this paperwork the Tazim went on a spending spree just before their little rag-tag fleet was conquered!" I held up the offending paper before me.

"Do you wish to dispute the charges?"

"No!" because that means I would have to admit, before a witness, on record, that I was accepting them in the first place.

Commander Drich didn't have days like this!

Now that I owned these displaced Tazim I also got their internet access to the Exchange too. I could do anything I wanted with them. Use them as soldiers, shock troops, cannon fodder, cooks, cleaners, experimental weapons crash dummies, biological research, sell them to insectoids who would infect them with their lava to be eaten alive. I could take out an ad and become a mercenary. I could conquer a planet and become a king. I could do anything I wanted so long as all the paperwork was signed and the taxes were paid.

I was dealing with alien bankers and lawyers. Suddenly, having a brutally efficient self-replicating weapon of war didn't seem like enough!

-000-

To my right was an oh-so-helpful Help Screen from the Exchange that I was using to pursue alien law and the rights of Conquers.

"I don't have this kind of money!" I growled.

"Are you declaring bankruptcy?" the alien bug on the screen across from me asked. It had been sitting there patiently for a while.

Which was okay I guess, I was paying for the phone call after all.

"No!"

These people don't have jail. They have work farms, slave mines and cooks. I was not going to be some slimy three-headed alien's rare dessert!

"Then I fail to see the problem. You have plenty of resources. Use them to make yourself some money, or sell something."

"I don't know. What kind of commodities are in demand right now?"

"The usual: naturally-formed jewelry, rare metals, tools, technologies, commodities, entertainments, scientific discoveries, vehicles, starships, space stations, food factories, slaves, planets you don't intend to keep . . . "

Yeah . . . right!

With disgust and unhappiness I ended the call.

Technology? Ha! From what I was getting about sixty percent of this galaxy was full of aliens who had technology comparable to my own. By the time one alien species ran into another it had usually colonized quite a few planets – 250 give or take, with at least five billion on each of them, plus colonies, satellite systems, ships, space stations and so on and so forth. Despite the amount of personnel and technological base needed to achieve such a result they're still conquered by the aliens with the bigger stick and more money and more people and more advanced technology. It wasn't all that unheard of for one type of alien to completely dominate an entire galaxy on its own with the rest becoming client races. That takes a few tens of thousands of years to do and all the advancement that that implies. This galaxy was actually unique in that it had very few lifeforms but lots of territory and was one of those Trading Hubs where various species from different galaxies had come to colonize and compete. So there were hundreds of competitive, top-dog alien races, all of whose ancestors had climbed out of the primordial muck and fought off all comers to create their own galaxy spanning empire.

It was no wonder, now, why my ROB had taken away my weapons and given me a different set. If the other aliens had seen what I used for Advanced Defensive Buildings they'd probably fall over and die laughing.

I mean, look at this!

These were the specs I found for a proper anti aircraft cannon: Surface/space combination repulsion, multicomputer firing multi-energy defense cannon, code-named "The Screech:" maximum range 625 miles, 15,000 shots a minute, simultaneous tracking of 130 vessels or 2,300 bombs, destruction potential A-13 (that's capital ship penetration), cost before discounts, C23,475.000 plus freight and installation.

And that wasn't even top of the line. Just general purpose.

That alone beat all the guns from Planetary Annihilation even if you strapped them together like some idiot and had all the upgrades.

The proper costs for defending even one planet?

They sell packages.

Automatic cannon that fired fifteen hundred miles into space could shoot down a space fleet with one salvo, too many to count to cover an entire planet but first time customers had the option of buying the factory that could produce them and the spare parts at a discount.

1,000 deep space probes that scanned anything moving within ten light-years of the customer's star

150 space drones that patrolled orbits with automatic firing at all unidentified craft

1 factory for the production and modification for identification beacons for all land/sea/air terrestrial craft

12,000 atmosphere beacons

1,256 Mark 50 combat fighters

1,400 fly-away, antipersonnel tanks

17,000 antipersonnel road barricades (They sell road making machines that make Disney's Magic Highway look like a middle school science fair project for history class.)

500 city wall energy barrier domes plus defenses with retractable gates

150 search drones

150 automatic target destroy atmospheric surface drones that fired heat beams

200 automatic target destroy aquatic drones

500 stealth drones with variable weapons load

1 supreme command and communications center - like NORAD - customized for the alien species with complementary alien super computers plus software packaging and cyber warfare systems

Assuming something the size of Australia, that's per continent by the way!

And a whole hell of a lot more depending on options chosen and the type of planet you needed to fortify. Also if it had a moon or not. Then you got into the space stations and mobile space docks and shipyards . . .

And on and on and on!

With spare parts and freight it comes to C500,962,878,431 Galactic Credits with a fifteen percent annual interest rate, plus an estimated C285,000,006.000 annual military and maintenance personnel salaries, housing and equipage. Food was under another budget entirely, especially if you have a mixed crew.

They called that an efficient and economical planetary defense system. All top-of-the-line merchandise. Good for a hundred years.

"We're totally screwed," Nicolle said with dead-pan seriousness as we reviewed the specs for some of this stuff.

Slaves?

I don't have any. And even if I did, I wouldn't sell them. I'd kill my enemies first rather than sell them to the Exchange, certainly not the Tazim or the Tuttle-Monkeys.

We found this advertisement put out by the Collection of Cellular Creatures. 100 Galactic Credits per sentient body. They drown you in a vat and when you come out you're a host to a hundred billion sentient germs.

I'd shoot myself first before I ever let that happen.

Not that it would matter much to the Germ-oids. They actually prefer their hosts to be a little brain dead. Makes controlling them a lot easier.

In fact, when I approached the concept with Nicolle she brought up an add from another company that sells suicide/anti-slavery/anti-mind-control devices. I contacted them and they sold me the specs for one of their top-of-the-line units.

We had ours installed within the hour.

No mind-fuckery for us!

As for planets . . .

No.

Just flat out hell no!

A Commander does not give up his planets. That's backwards thinking. A planet is a source of metal. Mine! It's that simple.

As a last resort I could probably strip mine a world to pay off the debt. We put that in the maybe pile.

Could I get in on the energy trade?

No I couldn't. The power brokers of this galaxy each had a handle on a star nearest their planet, i.e. the sun, dah!, and they didn't let anyone move in on their territory. One star to feed a star per solar system. Unless it had multiple stars. Mercenaries call those kinds of places payday. It was the Solar Kings versus the Antimatter Brokers versus the Dark Matter Breeders versus the Black Hole Wranglers and yes, it kind of reads like the local sports teams.

If the sports teams were owned by different monarchs who would call the old Mob their little ignorant cousins.

They weren't going to let me get a foothold in edgewise. These guys threw around nuclear weapons for fireworks!

No literally, exactly like fireworks. When you have something like unlimited energy you have to do something nice for yourself for your birthday, and your kids party, and your naming ceremony, and for the day in which you gained power, and something nice for your third wife too. These guys threw around more energy in a day than most militaries did in a year.

Could I sell metals?

Yes I could. There was a huge market. But I needed that metal for my own self. There was serious competition out there and I needed every bit of it. These people were rich!

For instance, in 2,000 of the closest and most explored and known galaxies of the 14 known universes there were exactly "Three" companies that professed expertise in producing Dyson Spheres.

You heard what I said.

How do they do it?

Easy.

First they strip mine the various solar systems around the client's star producing Big Damn Energy Field Generators, thousands of them, each bigger than almost all of the starships you can easily name in fiction that aren't themselves planets. They ring the sun in three dimensions. Then when the time was right and a few stars were ready to be sacrificed for the initial startup power they envelop the star in an energy bubble. This energy bubble then collects the total solar output of the star for power and uses it to transmute a small amount of that energy into the Dyson shell. Takes about 1,100 years if you do it right.

They do a little custom redesigning of the star in the process, just so it stays a nice, big fat and happy star for as long a time to come.

Could I sell the Tazim ships?

I went back into the throne room, put my armor back on and made the call.

When my connection went through I got the same alien, same spoon decorations. Maybe her kind was selected specifically to deal with my type of alien?

I put the question to her/it.

"One moment," the giant bug said as it seemed to look something up. "Ah, here we go. Tazim war cruisers . . . Vulcan class. Vulcan . . . specifications . . . ah, here it is. List weight one hundred twenty two thousand tons, solar skin, fusion powered, main battery 64 Maxus beam cannons . . . complement 3,425 Tazim marines, 663 operating crew with 234 warship droids and 10,763 marine general-purpose battle droids with space-combat refit . . . commanded by a half-captain, autonomous authority over local tactical conditions. Then there's the rest of the fleet and the support vessels . . . hmmm. Are you selling them with or without the Tazim?"

"Without," I declared.

She mused a bit. "For the entire fleet of vessels, minus whatever you keep for yourself, plus maintenance costs to get them ready for resale, about 84,000 Galactic Credits."

Hurray! "Each?"

"No, total."

Darn! "With their crews and so forth?"

"110,000 credits," she/it replied. "But of course you'd also have to give up enough food and atmospheric consumables to get them to the resale lot in decent condition."

I frowned.

Nicolle, who was sitting out of site on the far end of the room, was frowning more.

With but a mental command I had the Food Critic open a set of dockyard doors and launch a ship. The ship was an exact copy of the Proteus, life size. Except for a few modifications to run the thing by remote and get it where I needed it there were no modifications or upgrades at all.

I used to build hobby ships back home.

I sent the ship into hyperspace and had it park itself outside of the communications satellite we were using.

"How much for this thing?" I asked.

Scanning beams from the satellite hit the starship.

"Hmmm . . . a bit of a clunker. But plenty of room for expansion and upgrades . . . nice garden area. I'll give you C3,000.000 for it."

My jaw hit the floor and cracked the linoleum. "That's all?"

"Well it is a bit dated and C3,000.000 is generous. My offspring has been begging me for a starship of her own for ages now and this fixer-upper is just the thing to get her started on. No other resale lot would touch it, I'll tell you that much."

"What about something like my ship?"

"Well we didn't get a very good scan of it on passive. You have some very decent stealth systems. But based on the size and estimated tonnage alone you're looking at about 105,500 Credits."

I was so fucking glad I didn't show off my BLOSC Hailey rockets or the Smoots Drive while I was in range of the communications satellite. Those two things and my production capacity seemed to be the only things I have that were capable of competing with the Galactic Scene.

I sold the Proteus of course. It disgusted me.

Then I went back and asked and it turned out that Hi!Click and Gurr did have a very extensive family as all insectoids do. Provided that I could keep producing ships like that she'd buy them all.

I then put the Xeno-Commander's considerable bullshit computer power to getting a handle on the alien stock market.

-000-

I looked at the money I'd had collected from the alien ship. There wasn't much. Just bar money. Nicolle was also looking at the bank notes with me with a bit of curiosity.

We were eating breakfast at the table together as had become our habit in recent weeks. Buffet style. I tell ya, if it wasn't for the modifications done to our bodies we would have busted a gut.

The alien money was a black piece of, well, it wasn't paper, plastic, or metal. It was black. Rectangular, flat, about six inches wide and a foot long. The – I'm going to call it paper – felt a bit rough but it seemed to glow. It had a nebula pattern and bright starburst on it. But the remarkable thing was that it was worded in what must be thirty languages: thirty numeral systems, thirty different types of lettering. Thanks to the Exchange and the Tazim I now knew three of them.

I read: "The Galactic Bank" and "One Hundred Galactic Credits" and "Guaranteed Legal Tender for All Transactions" and "Counterfeiters Will Be Vaporized" and "Certified Exchangeable at the Galactic Bank on Presentation."

One side had a four different alien faces on it. One was humanoid, another insectoid, one who looked like the In-Barraza-Dig operator I'd first talked with, and the last looked like a plant, or maybe . . . who knows?

The "beings" were very dignified, the very portrait of integrity. On the reverse it had a similar-sized picture of an imposing building with innumerable arches.

It was all very interesting and let me know that the Bankers operated at the same level as SpaceBattlers. They had their own warships for when economic warfare wasn't enough.

I got up and headed out. "I'm going to talk to the Tazim aliens. You keep looking."

"Uh huh." She didn't take her eyes off the paperwork.

It had been three days since Galactic Bank had laid down the law. I could either figure out a way to pay them back or every pirate, bounty hunter, cop and warlord hoping to fatten their war chest with extortion money and sharpen their men's steel on the flesh of a newcomer with no allies know of where I'm at.

Three teleporter doors later I was in the prison barracks.

Did I mention that these Tazim Aliens are about as big as the plastic dinosaurs I used to play with in the sand?

There seemed to be some kind of disagreement going on. One of the creatures was on the ground bleeding yellow juice. Another one, not the biggest of the lot, reached down with its big jaws and snapped off both arms and swallowed them. They were so small.

"Skraww!" it yelled.

The rest of the group descended upon their fallen comrade and tore it limb from limb. One of the smaller ones got a hold of the tail and went running off with a dozen of its fellows in pursuit.

The one that bit off the arms contemptuously turned around and regarded me. Unlike the others this guy was a cyborg. He'd had his tail replaced at one point and one of his eyes was a big red prosthetic.

I'd learned a little about his species. In ancient times they weren't the hot stuff they were now. They had small arms just like the T-rex and not a one of them knew what a push-up was. They had to wait to develop advanced robotics and cybernetics to compete with the large and voracious wildlife of their planet. Nowadays genetic engineering and centuries of breeding had given them the big limbs they'd always wanted.

This guy was a throwback. A rarity like white hair. Plus he'd been sufficiently modified with cybernetics. His tiny arms operated these controls on his chest that operated these big ape-like limbs attached to his body harness. Between that and the armor he kind of looked like Dinobot 2 in his humanoid form.

He had a voice like someone had slowed down a tape recorder. "Well, well, well. If it isn't our new lord and master. Come to inspect the troops, sir?"

"You and me have a problem," I said, not at all getting into its power games.

He put his right robotic arm up against the force field separating us. "Yeah, you and me are on the wrong side."

I sighed and rolled my eyes. With but a thought a solid square pillar of metal underneath him and his friends rose into the air until they were about chest height.

"You're galactic system of commerce has saddled me with your debt."

"Yeah? Life's a bitch, ain't it?" he smugly replied.

"We need to figure out how to get rid of it."

"We? What's this "we?" stuff? You're the owner here, grub. And you'd better get crackin or they'll send some very nasty people after your hide."

I had the strangest idea that I was talking to an alien version of Logan from the X-MEN. Did you get that idea? Because I do.

"You know I could just toss you out the airlock if you're not going to be helpful."

"Naw. If you were going to do that you'd have done it already. You're a mammal. You've got that whole social order thing that dinosaurs like us invented way back in the evolutionary tree. You're not going to sell us as food, fuel, sex, incubators or for biological experimentation."

"How do you know what I'm going to do?" it was a question I already knew the answer to.

"We did our homework. You did not, forgetting all the effort your species made to get you this far."

"You seem to be very sure of that."

"Of all species you should know that mammals are the nastiest and most conniving of all."

"Then why don't I get rid of you right now, if I'm so nasty?"

"Because we're more valuable to you alive then dead. If you were nasty, you'd had already started torturing us for information, grub."

I thought about that for a moment. "You're crews. What are they?"

His teeth were too white and shiny. "By the definitions of the language programs I got about your species? You'd call them misfits, washouts, criminals of war, prisoners, super villains and gang-raped mental retards. By the way, grub, I don't believe we've been introduced. My name is Black Bart. A real pleasure to meet such a fine and distinguished being of the space ways as yourself."

I had 25,000 potential alien SpaceBattlers in my brig.

Oh ROB, save me!


	10. Arc 2 Chapter 3

"So, you guys going to be any trouble?" I ask.

"That depends on how much you're paying us." says the small intelligent space lizard.

"Exactly how much should I not be paying you?"

"Depends upon how much resources you don't have. We're a crack navy of mercenaries."

"My economy runs on metal and power. I could give you metal and you could sell it for scrap."

That gave him pause. "You're one of those idiot species that tried to go for the whole moneyless society didn't you?"

"Actually I never saw the need."

"Hold on, I'm sure we have a few attorneys and banking apprentices around here somewhere."

One hour later.

After one fight and two assassinations I had my lizards.

I took the basic design for a sufficiently large and intimidating desk, converted the top into a space my toy-sized friends could work with and gave them appropriately sized office supplies with a few ramps on the sides. The banker was tapping away at the laptop I'd given him. The attorney was looking over the paperwork. Black Bart was munching on a bowl of peanut butter-dipped cockroaches.

"This is insane," Attorney Elec declared. "According to this, your power generators actually turn excess energy you can't store back into non-energy!"

"Is that a problem?" I asked.

The space lizard looked up from the paperwork made by the printer I'd fabricated for him. "Is that a problem? It's impossible!"

"So?"

"You-"

Black Bart took a step forwards and cuffed him one. "Shut it, grub! If our new owner has bullshit power generators, then so much better for us. Now tell us what we can do with that?"

"Well first, I'd suggest you separate out your metal and energy economies into a diversified system with backups so that a heavy drain doesn't cripple the entire system," the banker declared as it tapped away.

"What he said," Attorney Elec said, grumbling as he rubbed at the backside of his head. "You should at least keep your military economies away from your infrastructure economies."

"Also this!" banker apprentice Greenie held up a file.

I took it from him and opened it. The thing was small and the writing was in an ultraviolet ink so I was glad for my mantis shrimp eyes. "What's this?"

"It's a powerful synthetic rocket fuel and explosive. There's so much energy tied up into its chemical structure that you can't actually burn it with normal flame," the banker said.

"Oh yeah, we love that stuff!" Black Bart nodded. "You need to mix it with another fluid to get it started until it's hot enough to burn on its own. One tank of the stuff in a racecar provides enough fuel for a trip around the world ten times!"

"Is it really that valuable? Why should I make it?"

"It's a liquid explosive. And unlike most munitions it can't be tagged," Black Bart said. "It's also very energy intensive to create. I only know of one place that makes the stuff locally. They covered a whole planet with lightning rods to collect the energy of a very energetic sun to convert the carbon to create the fuel they export."

So this super fuel was loved by mercenaries like pancake lovers liked their maple syrup eh? John Ringo, I think we have a winner.

I couldn't compete with aliens on alien tech – their tech is far higher than mine. As I can't develop my technology fast enough; I'd still need to build the tools to build the tools and develop all the science that went behind them. Far easier to buy, steal or borrow the tools from the aliens.

I was at the stage where I couldn't yet borrow, no credit. So I needed something I could sell.

Something I could export.

Like Taiwan. Earn the hard currency to modernize by producing paper umbrellas, and pencils with fruity colors. Fuzzy dice, stuffed bears, sunglasses, paperclips, bobble head toys. Made in Japan. Made in Taiwan. And now, made by NitroNorman.

And that's how Phlebotinum Fuels got started.

-000-

It's a tribute to Black Bart that despite his enthusiastic approval of the plan he'd actually, rather largely underestimate the people of this galaxy's love for Phlebotinum Fuels and the many, many variations on theme I was able to start pumping out.

Hi!Click and Gurr thanks me for the starships I built for her. Together, she, Banker Greenie and Attorney Elec got together with a few investors and put together a plan for the new company. There was a lot of legal mamby-pamby / money-palmy that went on and it all worked out. Another mercenary group paid to have a tanker space station moved nearby to facilitate the movement of goods in exchange for a 20 year discount.

The mercenaries got ten percent. I got sixty percent of the stock and named Nicolle as my CEO. This was encouraged by my new friends since money management was something she apparently excelled at and the rest of us did not.

Now that we had a source of income, payments on the debt being paid, we could afford to breathe a little.

Yeah, right.

-000-

It'd been a week since the newly named Phlebotinum Station was put into place 25 light years outside of my latest solar system where I'd conquered my newly acquired Tazim Mercenaries and we were having a naming contest. The Mercenaries needed a new name to go with the logo I was using.

I was working on something for my new employees when Black Bart flew into the room on a human-sized flying skateboard he's had fabbed up and converted to his own use in the garage.

"Sir, I think we have a problem!" he announced as he came to stop on a nearby workbench. "What is that?"

"Oh, hey Bart. This is your personal Armored Command Unit. What do you think?" The unit in question looked like Grimlock from Transformers. It was a fairly accurate life-sized reproduction. "I just got done detailing it," I tapped at the side of the chest and watched as it folded out a tiny cockpit.

"You made this for me?" his remaining eye was big.

"Well yeah. No offense but I can't take you seriously when you're so much smaller than me. If you're going to be working for me, you're going to need better weapons. And by better, I mean bigger."

"Wow. I don't know what to say," he says with a smirk. "You really are a mammal. Nobody's ever done anything that nice for me before."

"Just use it to kick ass."

"Oh, I'll be using it to kick more than a little ass, grub. I can't wait to try it out. All the other guys are going to be soo jealous. Shouldn't be too long now."

"You think we're going to be attacked, soon?" I'd been wondering about that actually. I wasn't exactly sitting on my butt here, I was tired of waiting.

"Well, yeah," he shrugged. "I expected it to happen before now actually."

Which was about when a few thousand missiles appeared out of hyperspace and took out a decent chunk of my defenses.

"What?"

Then came another salvo.

"No."

And then came another salvo.

"No, no, no!"

The Xeno-Commander was already on it. Before the first missiles hit it was already redirecting our forces.

We stopped pretending.

Every Advanced Radar Satellite, Diamond Leviathan, Arkady, Spaceball Scout and Weapons Platform activated their Smoots Drive.

Coverage for the solar system went from total to super extensive out to 200 light years as the same units scanned the same planets from every direction in a single second. Super Hubble Space Telescopes circumnavigated the solar system in seconds taking trillions of pictures giving the Xeno-Commander an eyeball the size of a solar system to see the universe with. New Avengers left the solar system moving in every direction like a swarm of bees rising from a hive ready to unleash hell on whoever was so stupid to be born.

Weapons free.

Our new sensors tracked the hyperspace signatures. Hundreds of thousands of laser platforms in orbit reoriented and used their Smoots Drive to appear near the path of the incoming missiles and filled the corridor of space they had to travel with laser fire. The action was much like having an armored vehicle travel down a highway at speed while the sidewalks were filled with angry people, like on parade, each unloaded their weapons into the vehicle as it passed them by.

They were tough little armored shits but if you keep pumping lead and power into them they'd stop eventually.

The Umbrellas on the ground sent ion shots into the air. Bell Bombers redirected their Rings bending and focused their shots so that even the ones which were normally out of range on the far sides of the planet could target a missile. The Anchors in orbit had teleporters built into them too. In cases where Rings existed between planetary orbits they acted as teleporters creating a two way highway for the cannons to hit from a totally unexpected direction. All my space stations had teleporters. My orbital factories had teleporters stationed nearby too.

Space and Planetary anti-nuke launchers spun up their carrousels, selected munitions and fired at incoming targets. The Rings either helped to accelerate them through the air using gravity manipulations or teleported them closer to their targets. Most time both.

In space the same Armored Shell Platforms I used to defend my ship arranged themselves in front of the missiles like a wall of romans with their shields to protect my planets. One, two, three or in some cases seven of the shields were penetrated but the missiles were slowed enough that other weapons could get a lock on them or were destroyed outright by kinetic impact.

It was very much like watching time-displaced roman soldiers going up against modern weaponry. We never got the chance to use them twice before they were destroyed. Fortunately I have unlimited production.

The Food Critic bounced around the solar system like the final boss on the hardest level. Avoiding the worst of the strikes and dishing out extra punishment where needed.

The Xeno-Commander saw it all and took care of it.

The economy was still intact. Safe below ground the factories continued to manufacture new units.

All around us machines fought and died in swarms.

Missile ID confirmed: Solar Siege hyperspace capable unit. Yield 500 megatons. Force field enabled. Planetary crust penetrator rounds.

I'd heard of those.

You shoot a missile into the crust of the planet by way of a weak fault line and use the explosion to cause the world indigestion. Every volcano, even the inactive and extinct ones, will erupt at the same time. If done right they'll never stop spewing ash into the sky for decades, ending all life on a world.

We needed to stop those things!

Aircraft, even vehicle units all threw their fire into the air to try and stop their attacks.

The Xeno-Commander did it. He stopped them from touching my planets.

Barely.

The last missile was so close to the ground it nearly touched the sand and rock before it blew up.

They were coming in just too fast, danger close, in too many unexpected directions for us to respond in time and their shields allowed them to tank most of our fire. If we hadn't had our Smoots Drive that allowed us to get our forces where we needed them soonest, or our teleporters that allowed us to apply even more force, half of my stuff would be slagged.

Inside the Food Critic I was smiling. "Oh this is perfect!"

Two minutes ago the Xeno-Commander tracked their signatures backwards to a giant platform far in space outside of our sensor network. When the missiles came the Xeno-Commander used the Smoots Drive to expand our network. Lightspeed lag was still a thing. We actually identified the missiles before the light from the platform reached my heavily modified advanced radar satellites, confirming what was suspected all along.

I'd seen it all. Microseconds passed before Nicolle and the others joined me for remote viewing from wherever they might be. We appeared before each other as window holograms appeared around us. All of us watching and waiting and shifting data as we tried to get a grip on so much happening everywhere all at once.

Due to lightspeed lag I could observe it backwards through time as it appeared out of hyperspace. A flash of light and a ripple in space and time and suddenly the enemy's weapons platform was here. What was it? The enemy's weapons platform was a giant sphere. The thing was bigger than my starship!

Well I wasn't going to let that stand. I'll make mine bigger later.

A force field popped on, big enough and strong enough to warp the light from stars behind it. The surface popped off into thousands of triangles. Revealing thousands of racks of missiles pointed in every direction. They launched, got about a mile from the platform – they actually went through the shield! I want that shield! – disappearing into hyperspace right after, reappearing in real space a few seconds later all over the solar system. Wherever they went, wherever they reappeared in real space, their orientation and momentum was taken into account so they were flying in the desired direction towards their targets. Underneath the first layer of missiles was another layer of missiles. And another and another and another.

There was a name for the things that sounded like many long and drawn out words to describe the many layers of rot on a tree in alien speak, so I renamed it The Onion Missile Spammer.

It took less than a third of a millionth of second for the Xeno-Commander to fire a Smoots Drive missile into the device just after it was found.

After its arrival into the middle of the machine a twenty foot sphere of its own materials were transformed into transuranic elements, elements of the periodic table that A) didn't have a name and B) couldn't exist long enough for you to say it if it did. Every single atom decayed very rapidly, all of them all at once, radioactively, turning into other elements that also decayed within a few seconds, releasing a tremendous amounts of energy.

The resulting detonation was the biggest release of energy I'd yet seen and turned the enemy device into an expanding ball of plasma.

Then we had to do it again for the other two Onion Spammers.

Good weapons test that.

Then it all went quiet.

"Did we win?" Nicolle asked.

Black Bart took out a cigar, lit it up and puffed out a big cloud of black smoke. "I think so."

Incoming transmission!

"It's the Station Master," I said opened the window. "Ah, Stationmaster Teeth. How goes the trade?"

The Tazim in my employ just looked at me. "Did you just get Onion Spamed?"

Nice to know the translators were keeping themselves up to date.

"Yes."

"Did we win?"

"Yes. At least for now."

"Are the deliveries for the rest of the Phlebotinum going to be made on time?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now if you'll excuse me, there are a thousand customers whose backsides I need to rub." He ended the call.

"Disagreeable cuss, isn't he?" I said.

Black Bart nodded and took out his cigar, tapping it on the side of his backwards facing knee. "Yeah. But he's the best scrapper I've ever known."

"Seriously though, are we going to be attacked again?" Nicolle asked.

He shook his lizard head with a whirr of cybernetics. "Not likely, grubet. I don't know what you did to blow them up but there are very few people in the 7th Galaxy that have the power to take one out fast enough once it arrives to matter. By the time anyone scrambles enough firepower to deal with the things they've usually expended all of their munitions."

That was when the fourth one showed up.

But the Xeno-Commander was ready.

This time we had the chance to strike first!

Rather than wait thousands of our new Rippers used their modified Smoots Drive to teleport into position and then, all at once, teleported the thing in a thousand different directions. Lots of the parts blew up, but the rest could be salvaged along with the parts and pieces of the missiles they'd collected and used to make my own version of the device. Shouldn't take more than a day for Professor Theopolis and the rest of the color-coded think tank of supercomputers to reverse engineer that monstrosity and give me a working design. Another day to make my own.

"Onion Spammers aren't cheap and they threw three of them at you," Black Bart went on, our little group completely unaware of what was going on in the wider universe.

"So we won't be attacked soon then," Nicolle thought about it. "What would it take to stop such a thing?"

"Some kind of hyperspace jammer, of course."

Nicolle face palmed. "Of course. How could I be so silly? How much do those cost?"

"A lot."

-000-

Hyperspace Jammers weren't small either. You needed a sufficiently advanced science to create the powerful gravitational field needed to affect the fabric of spacetime over a large area and then pop it in and out of hyperspace fast to screw with the rest of the universe.

Problem is that while my technology was advanced enough to produce the thing I didn't have enough funds to by the schematics. Eventually, we could scale up our gravity manipulation devices to get the job done but it would still take ass-loads of simulations, testing and design and refinement before we had a working kludge. We needed something right the fuck now.

There was a theoretical article concerning an alternative, but it was so impractical that nobody had done it. I went with that.

On each of the planets I'd claimed in a sphere of 200 lightyears I created the biggest hoola hoop you've ever seen. Had to go slowly since it tanked enough of my economy to put a real strain on it. Took a week. I would have gotten to work on something like this sooner but I was still incorporating upgrades and so on from the Galactic Encyclopedia and the stuff I'd taken from the Tazim starships. Had to put them in space since they were bigger than the equator of the planet itself. Every inch of it covered in a variety of weapons.

Then on the appointed hour, at the appointed time, all the planets disappeared.

For like, the smallest span of time possible.

Then they came back.

If you were on the planets or in orbit you wouldn't have noticed.

But out in space, for two hundred lightyears and quite a bit father than that, hyperspace failed as the Smoots Drive went into action bopping planets one smoot at a time.

Suddenly we were inundated with calls and complaints from ship captains about how I threw them out of hyperspace. Many of them had burned out hyperdrives and were wondering how I was going to pay for the damages.

Pfft! Like that was going to happen.

The Galactic Scene had a very reasonable method for scouting and the laying of claim to planets. The governments of various species sent out probes and were able to claim everything they could up until they met another species. Everything within that sphere was considered to be their Core Worlds, everything else was up for debate.

Most were useless.

After a while through the bureaucratic mill, when the star and all its planets have been analyzed, and decided that they weren't worth anything, they were listed on the Exchange.

The Exchange was where groups with money go, of course, as I'd explained earlier. It listed all of the discovered worlds and all the pertinent facts. The brokers had all this information at their manipulators. And any one of them, acting on behalf of a client, could put in a one-hundred-credit claim on the place, thus giving it to the client for a period of five standard galactic years. If the claim were challenged, the Exchange held an auction, with the rights going to the highest bidder, since one hundred units was roughly the costs of the bureaucrat's time and the paper the title was printed on.

Who bought worlds? Silly question. Big corporations and the military sometimes, occasionally local governments, to handle population and to get rid of annoying groups of minorities or other pressure. Pirates and the criminal who wanted to get away. Religious and political party groups were especially active in the field. If they had any kind of following at all, they could raise the money, assemble the colonization fleet, develop a world on their model, and "prove" their ideas.

And get out of everyone's hair.

The owner could do anything with his planet for the five years. Even blow it up. But if he did nothing, then it reverted to the listing. Many did.

Many of the planets I laid claimed to had been claimed as many as 110 times in the past following their discoveries. Many of them were un-discovered, unlisted, unknown, unfiled, useless, probably discovered lots of times and never filed at all. Nobody cared. The problem was cost – nobody had the kind of money it would take to make them livable.

That is until I came around.

My technology was the kind of thing that would have been made illegal and capable of putting entire populations out of work if my civilization didn't have a population of two. Each world gave me more metal, more mass to build things that didn't need to be metal, more places to put more generators, more factories, more weapons and ass loads of the ordinance I needed to defend myself with and the communications I needed to coordinate everything.

I'd laid claim to every star within my field of reach when I expanded my territory. Nicolle had filed the paperwork with the bank and the Exchange while I set up shop using the bar money from the Tazim when I conquered them. Didn't matter if most of it was more primitive that what the rest of the galaxy used. Quantity had a quality of its own.

I had the titles and awesome amounts of credit. Still in debt, but since I could adequately defend my property and had now demonstrated the fact we were capable of applying for loans now.

Those who were inconvenienced by my new Sector Hyperdrive Jammer were sent messages of thanks for telling us of their locations and informed that my Tazim mercenaries, who now went by the name Black Bart's Dinochrome Brigade, operating as police officers patrolling my little corner of the galaxy, would soon be around to scan their ships for contraband, ticket them for violations of territory, and offered to tow them to the nearest service yard at their expense.

Most of the violators found ways to disappear in a surprisingly short amount of time.

For those that survived the experience we offered to replace their hyperdrive system, in exchange for any slaves or goods they wanted to barter away of course.

Some of them even took me up on that offer.

A few more were sending me their resumes, offers for business and trade. The Life Makers offered to terraform any worlds I had for the right price. Fortunately I had Nicolle to sort through the junk mail.

-000-

With Black Bart's help we got back to the sanctuary of Skalorr in record time. He had a technique to keep others from following us to our secrete hideaway.

"It's very simple really," Bart explained over a pile of blue steaks made from a swamp fish native to his homeland. "You just have to open the hyperspace window a little wider and then Spiff it."

"Spiff?" Nicolle asked over a bowl of salad.

The gardens on board were producing the most life-filled vegetables you'd ever seen. I wasn't sure how they did it but the Monkey-Turtles really knew how to grow a turnip. Not bad for a being far away from his native planet on his own for eight months.

"Sorry, imprecise alien translation. It means to go in several directions at once while staying in place. A zero-sum jump. When in reality you can go wherever you want without being tracked."

"Ah," she nodded to one of her duplicates in a hologram window who was watching us dine. That Nicolle was in an Interface Cockpit with a dozen others and were operating the ship purely by the power of their minds. That Nicolle nodded at herself. "Yes, I think we can do it?"

"You sure?" I asked. 42 threads of thought or not I was barely keeping up with her 4200 threads of thought.

"Sure we're sure," she nodded.

When the time came we were able to thread our way through the overlapping hyperspace jamming. No more difficult than what our military does to maintain communications while jamming everyone else. Of course if we messed up we'd be sliced into cheese, but that's what made it fun!

The zero-sum jump worked perfectly.

We had to look around for the place a bit until we spotted the probe Professor Theopolis sent out to guide us in. In the weeks we'd been gone our little solar system had moved three whole lightyears out of position.

In orbit of Skalorr's sun was a new structure: the Hypergate.

Our gateway back to earth and other alternative universes.

I actually had several designs for the Hypergate.

The first was just a scaled up version of my Progenitor Transporter technology. Just in space and big enough for the Food Critic to pass go.

The second was from the Lost In Space universe. It had a better range since it used hyperdrive tech.

The third was a combination of the first two capable of moving the Food Critic from solar system to solar system without anybody knowing about them and that's what we were going to be using them for.

The fourth came from somewhere else that just showed up at some point. We just assumed that ROB put it there. There was even a short letter. It used two gates with one inside the other to create a "thicker" portal, and that's when most of our organic brain thinking breaks down. We weren't smart enough, even with all our enhancements, to figure out the rest.

Thanks to the star charts purchased from the Exchange I now know which galaxy, and which universe, Earth is at. The Hypergate swings its way around and uses the sun as a solar focus, combined with the dimension shift of the trapped solar system itself like a big ass telescope to get a lock onto the proper coordinates. The rest is all electronic, focusing on the right place using eleven dimensions to focus on a single area. All is ready to go.

"Are you sure about this?" Nicolle asks for the hundredth time.

We'd gone over this a hundred times already and I wasn't really in the mood to reassure her again.

"Not really," I said as I looked over the pod. The Xeno-Commander was already nestled inside. "ROB's message said only he and I were to travel by this method. I have to go. Somewhere on the other side of this portal is Earth. Maybe not OUR Earth, but one just the same. It probably needs my help."

She knew all the reasons of course, the same as my own. The Hypergate actively failed if someone other than me or the Commander approached it.

She gave me one more good buy kiss. "For good luck."

High on life and a few stimulants I climbed into the pod. Nanomachine tendrils snaked out to grasp at my armor and envelop me fully. The rest of the armor of the pod seals us up.

In mere moments the pod is jettisoned and sent hurling to the vortex of the Hypergate.

Inside I want to throw up. I want to stop this stupid ride. I want to scream for my mommy. I want to go back to our ship where I'm in command of everything and I have a lovely woman I want to hug and kiss and love and spend the rest of my days with.

Then with barely a ripple I went through the big portal thingy.

-000-

I became awake.

Reflexively, with the return of consciousness, I looked towards my weapons. I felt them within me, energy levels and weapons loadouts all at full. I felt them and relaxed slightly, moving on to other states of consciousness and checking my operating programs, indexing floods of data before coming aware of my sensors, testing communications programs, resource management, loading basic personality, overriding sub-Commander protocols and initiating full-Commander protocols.

I am alive. I am a Xeno-Commander. I am a brutally efficient self-replicating machine of war. I am Commander NitroNorman.

Having recalled that I am a Commander it did not surprise me that I thought about my weapons and their loadouts before even thinking about my name. There was no confusion as what happened with other commanders. All the knowledge was there, pre-loaded. I was ready for deployment. I would always think about my weapons and my ability to wage war before ever thinking about myself as an individual. When fully engaged with the enemy I would be a consciousness that would span stars.

I did not open my eyes or use my optics. Instead I was busy upgrading my body with the WormCam system my biological form had developed when he first awoke on Skalorr 243 Earth days ago. When it was ready the microscopic wormhole generators in my form activated allowing me to gather 360 degrees of data from each wormhole positioned anywhere about my person in a 200 foot radius.

I was still in my drop pod. I'd been active for 2 seconds. Three seconds to impact.

I spent the time reviewing every action I'd made as a biological being, both through my old eyes and through the Xeno-Commander's vast information gathering abilities. I was proud to have accomplished all that I had with so little. Wherever limitations imposed boundaries Nicolle and I had sought to surpass them.

Now that time was over. Where biological "me" had taken hours to design a machine and days more to test and make it work I could now do the same in seconds. In one fell swoop I absorbed the database of the Progenitors which was long on information and short on historical details, Earth which wasn't all that helpful scientifically but useful for entertainment and ideas, Skalorr with its Transformers-lite tech, and the information so far obtained from the Galactic Scene. It took but a moment to bypass the whole "studying the student" phase and know it all. It took only another moment to create an upgrade packet and sent it back along the quantum network to Professor Theopolis so that our progress could be advanced.

Also sent a text to my girlfriend telling her that I was okay.

Then communications back to Skalorr were cut as the energy-intensive Hypergate shut off. Even for a Commander being 17 universes removed was quite the stretch. Even more so in an alternate dimension.

I'll build my own Hypergate back soon enough.

Then the drop pod hit the ground with the force of a nuclear strike sending pieces in every direction, leaving me standing on a barren, sandy, red planet with two moons overhead. I could see everything. I could see things I didn't even have the names of. I could monitor the atomic structure of my body and knew about its various parts, abilities and designs. I could modify myself.

Then the dream-world logic lifted and I was able to fully engage my emotional subroutines.

I was the Xeno-Commander!

What happened?

Well actually my new mind knew what happened. We were transformed into energy on the event horizon and deposited into space here in the Sol System right above the planet Mars. We were turned into energy and when we turned back . . . I was absorbed by the Xeno-Commander. I was an info morph. My old body and everything that I "was" was turned into information. My body now existed in this little simulation I kept at the back of my now stupendous and bullshit computer brain while I operated the Xeno-Commander like it was my "real" body. No learning curve required.

ROB, thou art a giant dick!

I had a girlfriend for fucks sake!

Insert five minutes of swearing here.

I got over it. Kind of knew another shoe would drop at some point.

I looked down at my strange body. The eight limbs. Four of which could operate as hands. I had no eyes but I could see everything. It took me a moment to figure out that it was dark out. I didn't need to breathe.

I was totally fine with that.

The only changes made to the body were that the nails on the limbs had become the same red color as the poison I'd collected from Specimen 13 months ago when I first woke up in the arctic desert region of Skalorr.

Maybe this wouldn't be so bad. It's kind of cool actually.

I "felt" my connection back to the shard I was using. Several of the cell structures in my Xeno had rearranged themselves to maintain the connection.

Time to do something about that stupid thing.

So if the Corona Pollentia was the wireless device, what would happen if I opened the bandwidth a little wider?

I did so. Reorganizing my Progenitor cells to make a bigger version of the thing, observation of my internals revealed an increasing number of Picometer sized phage in the fabric of spacetime. Even with my best and smallest nanomachines these things were three orders of magnitude smaller. Undetectable by them. My Commander was a complete construct, every atom a violation of physics held in place by sheer effort of power propagated from another dimension. Sensing their disturbance in the force of the universe, so different from my own, was comparatively easy.

I knew where it is!

With the slightest little effort of my super-Progenitor tech I generated a two dimensional thread and fed it into those Pico-sized holes in spacetime and grabbed my shard. Then I plugged those wires into the thing and started draining off energy, mass and knowledge.

It didn't like that at all.

It sent messages of pain to get me to stop. I didn't give a fuck.

I was asking questions. I surpassed the point at which biological me would have gotten a thinker headache and kept on going. I got used to the idea that my shard didn't know what it was talking about as I spun up my cyber warfare suit and started attacking in earnest.

It's programming was the most asinine thing I'd ever seen. Of course I'd read about it in fan fiction online, but it really was stupid. Monkeys banging on typewriters could have developed something more elegant. A stupid program created by stupid beings with built-in stupidity-enhancing devices all working together at cross purposes. It couldn't have been more corrupt if I tried.

Gave quite a few ideas for cyber warfare, logic bombs and irrational coding bullets and spammer soda bots.

In the process of hacking the thing I'd actually managed to make it that more efficient just by deleting the junk code that was getting in my way.

Didn't stop until it was gone.

Yup, I ate it.

I had this whole other dimension the alien seed used to occupy with only a few bits left over to maintain the thing. I felt like a dog that'd run after a car and finally caught it, and was now wondering what to do with it now?

I could probably reproduce the shard if I wanted to. But I don't think I wanted to. Even a poor copy with a somewhat friendly interface provided by ROB it was the most idiotic Cthulhu-tech thing in a good many alternative universes. I could make a much better one, but it would only be a copy of the one I have. I couldn't reproduce the other powers, or equip my artificial shards with new powers without significant research and development and time. Not to mention installation and testing.

Maybe I'll go to the WORM universe at some point.

I'll probably happen. Seems to be a popular destination these days for Multiverse Hoppers.

In the meantime, Hammerspace Storage Dimension.

Now, it's been ten minutes since I'd landed on this rock. It was long since passed time to get things started.

First I pluck down a mass extractor, which can be put anywhere. Followed by a metal, mass, and power storage units. Put down some generators. A radar unit. Nothing around me but miles of sand and rock. Plus a few things sent by NASA. Create a Ship Factory so it could start pumping out nanomachines to create a ship to get me off this world.

Actually, now that I had all this information on hand that nanoship didn't seem all that great. The Shard was pretty much just a giant cheat code book for the game of life. Making nanomachines was only a small part of possible applications.

I thought about it.

Then I turned and pointed my true-right hand at a nearby rock.

With something like a cool special effect, the air between my hand and the rock turned black as the Smoots Drive teleported the materials in the air into nanotechnology, disrupting physics on a primal level while creating a significant static charge on the way to its destination.

It looked like a black beam of light shrouded in lightning.

The stuff created in the air was about as structurally sound as a spider web floating in the wind but it only had to exist for a fraction of a second.

The Smoots Drive created circuitry out of the very air and more Smoots Drives in series, which had in turn created more circuitry in the air and more Smoots Drives to perpetuate itself all the way to the rock and deconstructing the stuff on the way there.

A rock which turned black with circuitry as the Smoots Drive(s) converted it into nano machinery, power source and more microscopic Smoots Drives. Then with speed the whole rock completely converted. An effect that was eerily similar to when a Galvanic Mechamorph merged with a piece of technology.

I could convert an entire planet with this method, I mused.

Might take, oh, say about three hours or so? Plus a little more for the hot, juicy and radioactive core.

I think I'll call that my Digitizer Beam.

Ah, to create a completely new toy/weapon for me to use/abuse.

Almost makes up for everything.

I can still make a humanoid body for myself.

Still wanted defenses in depth.

So that meant making nanomachines, making factories, creating a Hyper-Subway system, and building everything else a Commander is known for. Also making sure that Mars was unoccupied. Didn't want to run into any Martians accidentally. So that meant lots of Airball and Spaceball Scouts.

Mars was unoccupied. No Mars Attacks for me!

One factory, as soon as it was created, manufactured brain needles. They were standing up as they were created and launched soon after.

The million toothpicks raced ahead on their Smoots Drive around the sun to the other side and Earth. Went to the dark side where everyone was sleeping. Once on site they used their Smoots Drive to turn themselves into tiny fist-sized Air ball Scouts and had a moment to look around and send me pictures.

Also to hook me up to the internet – not much different there from what I had on record but alternate world and all.

A few of the Brain Needles lived up to their names and inserted themselves into the skull of a thousand or so adults while they slept all nice and comfy in their beds.

Also into the heads of nearby zoos and animals like bears, dolphins, whales, monkeys, ape, wolves, tigers, a few birds. Boy would I be silly if I found out later that the animals were intelligent too.

So, you know, just to cover all the basics.

Infiltration of the Earth was going all to plan for about five minutes when one of my brain needles ran into a thing occupying someone else's head.

What?

Full stop.

I mean I didn't stop building things on Mars but on Earth everything else came to a complete halt.

The brain needle read it as foreign contamination and for one fraction of a second I thought maybe the person might have an organic brain implant or was superhero cyborg or something. Then the nanomachines found the alien DNA.

Spinning up the Lost in Space medical programs I took the sample and reproduced the creature in electronic form.

Oh wow that's tiny.

It's a Yeerk!


	11. Arc 3 Chapter 1

The Animorphs.

Wow, I hadn't thought about them in years.

Let's see, what do I know of them. Well I have access to a copy of the internet and all the knowledge of an alternative Earth where they were a book and TV series so that took all of (X) amount of seconds. Pretty much reinforces my original opinion of them.

You can wax poetic all you want about Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Faculty, the Puppet Masters and Pod People, and so on and so forth.

But then there were the Animorphs.

No doubt about it. K. A. Applegate wrote one of the most competent alien invasions stories there are. The invaders made very, very few mistakes, everyone was fairly competent, only a few instances of stupid for stupidity's sake were done but that was because they were stupid that one, or two, times and it wasn't a running theme, lots of character development, things got harder, darker, more hardcore right until the very end. What an ending!

The stuff was pure nightmare fuel. It came out right in the middle of the X-Files craze and supplanted Goosebumps as the most popular children's book series of the mid-1990s, despite the fact that it was supposed to be for young adults.

My first introduction to the series was in my middle school library. I saw the cover of one of the tattered copies of Marco turning into a bug and my first thought was "Hey! Kids with super powers!" I didn't much understand it at first because I was a kid but I was immediately hooked. Then I got my mom to buy the first book and all the other books one at a time as I read my way through the series.

Even thought I was reading the thing I didn't realize just how dark it is because I was a stupid kid.

I don't know how many hours I stayed up late at night to finish the books. I also don't know how long I stayed up late at night with my hands on my covers looking at the ceiling and just thinking, thinking, thinking; boy was I tired when I finally got up the next day to go to school!

You could talk all you want about the other stories of the day. Power Rangers were cool with their monsters and their robots that don't do much but transform into a giant warrior machine. Spiderman was the underdog, the mutants from the X-MEN were outcasts, the Mummies Alive! had magic, Gargoyles were displaced warriors through time that had a little of everything, Bravestar was the sheriff of a whole planet, Carmen Sandiego had two cool kids chasing an awesome thief around the world and then you had space ducks playing hockey. Stories about mutants, robots, super heroes, cyborgs, aliens, beings from another dimensions, space fleets in anime, people who just do awesome stuff and so on and so forth.

But the kind of thing that used to get to you, really get to a young child like I was, was the invasion plot. There were lots of invasion stories, endless variations on it, just as there were endless variations of the other stories, but this was the special one.

It was designed to scare the hell out of you.

The monsters, usually from some kind of weird civilization, would arrive secretly by spaceship and creep up on unsuspecting towns without anyone knowing any better. Then the bastards would take over someone, your neighbor, your best friend, you teachers, your parents, your sister, your dog, they'd take over without a shot being fired. And the only time you knew of them was when you were six seconds away from becoming one of them.

The Animorphs are pretty unique.

About the only things the humans had going for them were sheer numbers. In a galaxy where a space fairing race might have a couple million people, total, humans had 4.5 billion. We reproduce quickly, are adapted for a wide range of environments, have good tool using abilities, and have five senses. Which are fantastic for a group of body-snatching alien invaders. Except that those very same numbers are what give the aliens pause. There was also a comment made by one of the Yeerks who died after gaining control of Jake, the leader of the Animorphs, that the planet had an unusually high number of diversified life forms.

For instance, the Andalite Homeworld only had three different types of birds on the whole planet.

The Yeerks are the protagonist. Imagine a big slug. By its own viewpoint life is wonderful on the Yeerk Homeworld. You spend your days swimming around in a pool of sludge soaking up Kandrona Rays by the light of your blue and freakish sun all fat and happy. Your sense of taste and smell are one undifferentiated organ. You see the world around you as a sonar image. You have a sense of touch, and that's it.

Then one day something happens and this giant thing is suddenly in the pool with you. There's an opening in the thing big enough for you to crawl through and your instincts are telling you to do that. So you go in, flattening yourself, crawling around obstacles and find this thing inside with electricity. You curl under and around it.

Then suddenly you realize that you've attached yourself to a brain and taken over the body of another being. You're sitting there on your ass – you have an ass now – looking at the world for the first time with a brand new pair of eyeballs. Yeerks don't have eyes. To them, having eyes suddenly thrust upon them is akin to having a religious experience! To experience color is the most wonderful thing in the whole universe. As a Yeerk who has suddenly gained the power to manipulate the world around him with two hands, it's akin to a kid suddenly being plunked down inside a giant robot. They have hands! They have ears and eyes! They can walk! They can build things! They can talk!

A Yeerk who gains control of a host is called a Controller. They control the body, both the autonomic and more of the involuntary nervous system than the host they are controlling can do. They also gain all access to the memories and experiences of the host, in essence "becoming" that person. Instant education and knowledge dump with perfect acting skills. You now know the giant thing in the pool was this creature's head and the tunnel the ear canal. You control everything. All the while the original intelligence is screaming at you, trapped inside his own head.

Then the Yeerk looks back at where it comes from. It's the size of a kiddie pool. It contains all your friends and that was your whole world up until about two minutes ago. If you wanted you could reach in with your two new hands, pick up one of your friends, and crush it into pulp without even trying.

The worst part of this sudden ascension to power is that it has to end. Roughly every three days, 72 hours, a Yeerk must return to the Yeerk Pool to soak up Kandrona Radiation or starve. Their natural form is an insignificant slug, blind, deaf, with no hands. That's like going from crippled to superman or something and back again. Universally and almost without exception a Yeerk will kill to keep its host body.

Then there were the Andalites. A race of aliens that were described as half a horse, half scorpion, half human and half something else. Not once in the books were they ever called centaur. The males are covered in blue fur and the females only have bluish-purple fur, which becomes slightly tan colored as they get older. Their arms, somewhat weak in comparison to that of a human's, end in seven-fingered hands, which, while weaker, are nimbler as well. They have two extra eyes on a pair of eyestalks. They have no mouths. They communicate using telepathy called Thought-speak and their technology is advanced enough to be communicated with just by the power of their minds alone. They eat by crushing grass under their hooves and absorbing the nutrients. They can even close their hooves whenever they want to stop the absorption of nutrients or water.

Having evolved from prey animals they developed a very formidable defense: a scythe-like blade on their long whip-like tails. The shorm, which literally means Tail Blade, as known in the Andalites language, but is smaller in the females, more like a scalpel and their tails are weaker as well. This bladed tail is long enough to reach well in front of the Andalite to strike deep blows in an opponent. The tail is also an important symbol in Andalite culture, and is frequently referenced to in sayings and rituals. The tail is so important, an Andalite would rather die than live on without it.

Andalites are very technologically advanced, boasting of a vast knowledge of science. They have several notable developments, primarily Z-space technology. Z-space engines allow a ship to travel through Z-space, an entirely blank, void, whitespace, and exit again some distance away, shortening travel time immensely, and working around the limitations on faster-than-light space travel. Z-space transponders work similarly, allowing one to communicate through Z-space, similar to radio transmissions.

Next, the ships themselves deserve note. First, there is the standard fighter ship, which has short stubby wings and a Shredder gun slung over the top, fashioned to mimic the raised Andalite tail, which is posed as a threat or challenge. Next, there are the vast Dome ships. These ships are the main transport ships for fighters and crew. The "Dome" portion is an entire ecosphere, complete with atmosphere, grass, and water to sustain the Andalites on-board, so that the Andalites can carry their homeworld wherever they go. These ships can host many fighters, and generally only one Dome ship is called out for an entire battle, with the occasional need for two, and the rare necessity for three. All Andalite ships are equipped with Z-space flight capacity, and shredder guns. The shredders on a Dome ship are rumored to be capable of punching a hole clear through a moon.

Andalite Pictures for the Fighter and the Cockpit, the Dome Ship.

I'll be wanting to be getting a few of those.

The next technology of note is the morphing power, obtained via the Escafil device, a small blue cube. Morph-capable beings are capable of 'acquiring' any animal, absorbing their DNA by touch, and then at any time 'morph' that animal, physically transforming into that creature. The technology uses cascading cellular regeneration, combined with a variant on Z-space technology, in order to make the transformation. It typically takes about two minutes to morph, and if one stays in morph for more than two hours, they are stuck, becoming a Nothlit. A Nothlit can never return to their original form, or morph, again. While in morph, one is capable of thought-speak. One also has the drawback/advantage of being confronted with the morphed creature's mind and instincts. This proves very useful for using the body and functioning at its peak, but it also proves to be a struggle when you first enter the morph, and also whenever you go against the creature's desires (a cat attacking a mouse, etc.)

Also want that.

The Andalites have many relations to many different species outside their planet. They are usually well-known for being "good-guys," spreading enlightenment and aid wherever possible. However, an example that severely mars the reputation of the Andalites, and simultaneously jades many Andalite minds to their own culture as well as outside species, is Seerow's Kindness, an Andalite law that states no Andalite can ever reveal technology or secrets to other alien races.

Prince Seerow was one of the first Andalites stationed on the world of a newly discovered species, the Yeerk Homeworld. In their natural state, Yeerks are blind, defenseless slugs. They were capable, by some odd fluke of evolution, to enter into the brains of other species, interface, and control them. They had already done so with the pitifully weak-minded species on their own world known as the Gedds. Even so, they were never really aware of anything beyond their small homeworld and their natural pools. Seerow felt sorry for them, and aided them. He taught them how to read and write and showed them the stars. He even built them portable Kandronas, enabling them to leave the Kandrona-rich pools sustaining them and explore their own world.

That was a big fucking mistake.

In gratitude for his aid, for showing them the stars and all the things they could never have, a rebel faction of Yeerks attacked the Andalite outpost with a stolen shredder gun and a few clubs, slaughtered the guards (who had been specifically instructed by Seerow not to fire on Gedds), stole the Andalite fighters on the ground, and escaped to space, but not before returning to the far side of the planet to stock up on their fellow Yeerks. Then, with numerous pools full of Yeerks, they left to conquer the galaxy.

Since then, the Andalites have been battling against the Yeerks, trying to prevent them from taking over more innocent worlds.

They have already taken over numerous species, including the cannibalistic Taxxons, and their herbivorous shock-troops, the Hork-Bajir. The problem was that there are simply not enough of these troops. So, the Yeerks are now after the humans, hoping to gain the sheer numbers to burst out in every direction and subdue numerous races, and eventually take the Andalite homeworld itself.

Then you have the Animorphs themselves.

Five kids from school, named Jake, his cousin Rachel, Marco, Cassie and Tobias, who decided to take a shortcut through a construction site to get home in time for their parents curfew after visiting the arcade, observe an alien ship falling to the ground. The injured Andalite pilot tells them of the Yeerks who are secretly infiltrating Earth by taking over people's minds and bodies. Before dying from injuries sustained when his spaceship crashed, Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul gives them the power to morph into any animal they have touched to fight against the Yeerks' invasion of Earth.

Unable to trust almost anyone else and operating from a level of paranoia that is fully justified, they begin a violent and secretive guerrilla war against the invading Yeerks to save the Earth.

Later, but still early in the series, they are joined by Elfangor's younger brother Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, after an Andalite fleet was defeated by the Yeerks in battle and he escaped in a life pod.

During the course of the series, the six teenagers grow from fun-loving kids into an elite team of paramilitary troops, attacking the Yeerk invasion force wherever it is discovered. Along the way, they find allies that they never expected, enemies that prove more dangerous (and, in some cases, bizarre) than the Yeerks themselves could ever be, travel to alien worlds, and confront their own inner conflicts. Month after month of pressure begins to take its toll, and the kids are irrevocably changed from the innocent suburban youths they once were.

The series heavily deconstructed the Recruit Teenagers with Attitude / Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World concept, turning what could have been a Saturday morning cartoon into pure horror. War Is Hell is in full effect, with the six protagonists having nightmares about the horrors they have to endure, they're silently tormented by the morally questionable things they do, the battle against the Yeerks erodes their personal lives and relationships, and over the course of the series they shed their innocence to become battle-hardened soldiers before they're even legally adults. Additionally, it is emphasized repeatedly that their efforts are not enough: the Yeerks have infinite resources, an infinite army, anyone they know could betray them, and they have to balance the war with their normal lives so no one catches onto them. All they can do is sabotage the Yeerks until the Andalites hopefully send their fleet one day to save the Earth, but in the meantime they are only delaying the inevitable.

Then there was the Ellimist.

Also known as Toomin, a Ketran male who, through a series of extraordinary circumstances, became an almost omnipotent, god-like being.

In his original life Toomin could be best described as a "gamer;" he frequently played a life simulation game called Alien Civilizations, very popular among his people, which gave each player an alien species and tasked them with slightly modifying their environmental or evolutionary aspects, so as to cause change over time. The aim of the game was to keep the species alive for as long as possible; if the species became extinct, the player lost. Toomin's game name was Ellimist. He chose the name because he "thought it sounded breezy," not knowing how important the name would become.

Then he had his planet destroyed, his species nearly exterminated in the process, was marooned on a moon on the far side of the universe with a few survivors, was then captured by an alien Cthulhu, tortured, leaving him the only survivor, killed his captor and acquired vast knowledge in the process, acquired super advanced technology which he also developed, merged with his technology and expanded his consciousness across the stars, helping people where he could so that nobody would have to experience what he had to live through.

Not unlike where most Commanders were going after a few thousand years of finding advanced technology, meeting aliens, and making themselves more powerful. Drich could be a baby Ellimist if given five thousand more years to develop.

Now he plays the Game of Life for real. His opponent is a similarly-powerful being known as Crayak, exiled from his home galaxy by another group of powerful beings. It is hinted that this extra-galactic criminal is now much more powerful than those who exiled him, but continues to advance himself so that one day he could defeat the "one" who is as above him as he is above humans. Together the two play a game throughout the local universe with Crayak trying to destroy worlds, eliminating the weak and ruling the strong, while the Ellimist tries to save them and advance civilization.

The Ellimist frequently interfered in the Animorphs' lives, sending them to possible futures and distant planets, so as to help defeat Crayak. When he appeared to the Animorphs, he tended to take the form of an elderly male humanoid with glowing blue skin, similar to the typical wizard or wise man archetype.

Taking my time it took about six seconds to review the books and what other people had written online. I stopped what I was doing and looked around. Barely sixteen minutes had passed since I arrived.

"Ellimist? Are you around?" I ask.

Of course Mars didn't have a breathable atmosphere but sound still carried. And radio waves.

Stepping out of thin air came the old man from the cover of the book. He walked with all the surety of age and experience. Regal in stature. The kind of man powerful warriors would step aside to allow for unhindered passage. When spoken, Kings shut their traps and listened.

"Greetings, Commander NitroNorman," he said with a grandfatherly smile.

"Greetings, ROB," but there was no hostility in my tone. If I could I would have smiled. The nature of my body was almost organic, so I think the body language translated well. "Sorry about calling you a dick before . . . but, you know?"

"Indeed," he didn't nod. He just stood there. Hoo boy.

"So what's the game plan?" I asked. "The usual Commander shenanigans?"

"In the timeline your author wrote about, the enemy was able to act with the help of a willing herald." He let me fill in the blanks myself.

Yeah, saying his name or his herald's might draw the things attention. "Cyber-lizard boy." I helpfully supplied.

He smiled a tad. "As good a description as any. Do a good job."

Then he turned around and walked away, disappearing from every sensor I had trained on him one at a time until the being itself faded from existence.

Even the record of the conversation faded from my mind until it was just a memory of a memory of a memory. Rather frustrating. It was like trying to remember a math test I had back in seventh grade. I knew I had a math test, I even remembered seventh grade. But the specifics?

Other than a few words and a quick sketch I quickly scratched into the side of a convenient rock with my own four hands I didn't remember much of what happened. I couldn't tell you what he looked like.

The only evidence I had of his visit were a few footprints in the sand that were quickly fading away with the wind.

Wow.

Just, wow.

So in this timeline I was to play the part of the anti-Drode?

I was soo not ready for this.

Given half a chance, yes, I'd poke a big stick in the giant cybernetic eye of Crayak and blow up his miles-high throne. And whatever planet he was on. And the sun it was orbiting. And probably make unusable whatever part of the galaxy he'd been occupying, hang whatever innocent species might be in the way just to be sure.

Because in everything, it would be worth it.

If all the Commanders I'd read about back when I was living my life as a human before I got snatched put their heads together with me, right now, we'd probably qualify as small thorn in the guy's side. Even with all the tech some of them had acquired, this was the Evil version of Q we're talking about here. He and the Ellimist had been playing the game of life for thousands of years. They played for keeps. The last time those two went to war on each other half the life in this galaxy died and most of the suns blew up. So now they played a cold war with each other not too different from the one the Ellimist played when he was a flesh and blood mortal a million years ago.

The irony was probably not lost on the Ellimist.

Cryptic message delivered and received.

I set up most of my economy on automatic as my first orbital factory came online. Underground the effects of my Digitizer Beam was carving out my Super-Subway system. As a cavern and underground base was being constructed and direct by my mind in real time I brought up one of the programs I'd gotten from the Exchange. Well, actually after seeing my first attempts at designing way back when finding a bunch of programs available for download for free from the Exchange helped me design the aesthetics for a lot of my stuff. This baby was top of the line and was even more helpful now that I am a commander.

The alien internet was a wonderful place.

In the past 2/3 of the year in which I'd been an SI I would have used either robotic labor or, more often nanites to get what I wanted done. In either case I would have had to scan the ground for the best spot to build on and then go through the long process of designing the entire structure, everything from the basic layout to the plumbing to the built in furniture.

Now I just thought about what I wanted and all that was done in a few seconds. Dreams made reality. It even made design changes moment by moment as I extracted different kinds of materials from the Martian landscape and grew larger stockpiles of materials. Elements of the periodic table that I didn't have to convert from other materials to get what I wanted.

Progenitor tech used a nice evenly distributed power grid that depended both on broadcast power and wires to get it where it needed to be. In this case I ripped out the wires and replaced them with Nano-tech cables that could modify and grow in size to hold larger currents, self-repair and install themselves.

The plumbing wasn't much harder.

Since the place was going to be, naturally, four miles underground I only put in a force field and a few dozen layers of armor between my base and the surface as a "just in case." Anything that could get to me down there probably counted as a capital ship's weapon with the power to "shred through a planet." In which case I only needed it to survive a few hits before I can arrange to be somewhere else.

The complex would contain a cavern with variable docks big enough for even a pair Dome ships, I hoped, along with the one-ended miniature Hypergates needed to get them in and out. Exact measurements from the books weren't a thing. Additional living space for over two thousand human beings and their families, plus quarters that could be adapted for a large number of very different aliens and their preferred environments. That meant something like 5 million dollars a night super hotel rooms, with the ability to change the atmospheric composition, gravity, lighting, plus food factories and the replicators I'd purchased on the Exchange so they'd have something to eat and drink. Also set aside a factory for the producing of android servants, concubine cyborgs, and droids. Plus labs of every type and size, combat simulation rooms, holding cells, storage vaults, armories, gardens, pool rooms, aquarium, zoos, and every other kind of room I could think up, all nicely arranged according to my tastes.

The whole base was also a paranoids dream, nowhere in the entire structure would be free of surveillance of every kind that I could imagine, the whole structure would have inertial damping/anti-gravity tech built into every part of it so that I could float, crush, or hold in place anything inside it. The walls would all be shielded and I would be able to put up shields anywhere in the structure. There were also blast doors throughout the structure, the air could be removed from any part of the structure, gas could be pumped in, there were various automated defense guns. The place would be a death trap that could slaughter any army I didn't want inside.

Naturally the whole place was concealed using aspects of Progenitor cloaking technology. Messing with the various EM scans was even easier. It was even capable of hiding different parts of the facility from the people inside. And thanks to the Smoots Drive I could teleport different parts of the facility around like some Cube to keep everyone guessing. Based on my own experiences with the Exchange and other technologies I'd picked up, this type of conceal meant should work against the best of what this galaxy had to offer.

I hoped so anyway.

Also worked on my Nano-Ship. It was relatively easy now, with my new Xeno-Commander mind, to develop a hyperspace concealment generator. It worked like my other cloaking technologies but what it actually did was prevent everyone from knowing that I was using a hyperdrive. But that was a side project.

After two days of messing around on Mars getting all my ducks in a row I had a few answers.

First off the Controller I tagged didn't know he'd been found out. At first I'd hoped that he thought it was an insect bite. But then I remembered Animorphs, and it wasn't beyond them to take a variety of insect morphs and do all kinds of things with them that Taylor from the WORM verse had never thought of. So I dashed that plan, hid my needle in the bone of his skull, worked on threading my nanites into his eyes and ears so I could watch the bastard.

If all went south I'd uses my nanites to destroy the body. Or I could Smoots Drive his head into orbit. That would leave a mystery behind for the other Yeerks to puzzle over and probably blame the Animorphs. It would give me a Yeerk to play with. I was fairly confident that I could get the head to me in time to put it on life support or something. The Yeerk would die from lack of Kandrona, unless the Yeerk gave me enough information to reproduce Kandrona Rays, unlikely. Then I could clone the man a new body.

So, plans.

I learned a lot of stuff about the Controller. The first was that he was a very, very good actor. If I'd been human I would have been completely fooled. But I was not human and I'd been reading some of the more interesting books about reading human anatomy and how to keep up a poker face.

First off, the human was very much alive inside and kicking. The Yeerk had to exercise a lot of control to keep the human from punching himself in the face or jumping into traffic. That translated as tension. A human would probably label him as someone who was exercising too much control over himself. Like he was fighting the urge for a cigarette with iron will or something.

He was one of many involuntarily enslaved humans.

I watched as the Controller went to visit a friend's house.

By the way, I knew the subject's name, but it was easier to compartmentalize my thinking if I didn't think about the subject as a real person. Made it easier to think about killing him and others like him.

The subject's friend was another Controller. Unlike my subject, who I tentatively labeled as Yeerk Controller Involuntary Adult-male 000001, the other guy went into his enslavement voluntarily. As a result of these actions the man now had a big house with an outdoor pool, indoor pool, three bathrooms, two jacuzzis, another jacuzzi which had been converted into a little Yeerk pool in the guy's basement.

If anyone happened to have stumbled onto the cages and restraint gear in the next room they would have come to the conclusion that the guy was into some very sick and very freaky sex.

Not that I was any judge for or against any of that. The alien internet had more perverse things on it than the human one ever did.

Altogether it made a very convincing cover for an executive film producer who specializes in porno. Once the subject was restrained with the help of a barely legal harem of blonds and brunettes and raven hairs, the Yeerk came out, was deposited into the pool, then all the fun and screaming could begin.

Cue camera.

-000-

The first step of destroying the Yeerks involved getting me to earth and doing a few things I didn't want to do.

After watching that poor man I decided that I was ready enough and all my fears and insecurities could go off into some deep, dark corner of my mind and die a lonely death.

In a few minutes I was loaded up in the Nano ship on my way to the other side of the sun.

I'd been examining the earth's computer systems with something a little more thorough than a fine toothed comb during the last two days, learning how to hack as only a Commander could hack.

Encryption?

Imagine if you were in a room with every human being on the planet. They each have a deck of cards spread out in a fan on the table before them, with a dozen hidden in their hands. You're moving so fast they can't see you and you can play a game against them all at the same time. And you're smart enough, bored enough to go around counting all their cards so that you know what kind of hands they have. You have enough time to put together a logical chart of predictions on how their games of poker and solitaire and spider are going to go. Mostly you're just waiting around, counting the micro ticks of a second, waiting for everyone else to respond so that you can finally make a move.

That's what it's like when a Progenitor computer hacks the Earth's systems.

In short I found evidence of alien interference everywhere.

Examination of Earth's satellites using Spaceball Scouts found pieces of hardware, about the size of a memory stick, attached to each and every one of them. The humans on the ground can type away all day long but it was the alien machinery that was ultimately in control, feeding back fake data whenever they wanted, allowing them to move in and out of the atmosphere without being observed or recorded. That took time and effort, indicating that the aliens could be found with the mark one eyeball if you knew what you were looking for. There was also less space junk.

The astronauts were probably infected by the Yeerks when they came up. So scratch NASA off my list.

I don't know what kind of stealth systems their ships were using but they were at least as good as my own. Sensor wise I couldn't find them. Not without possibly revealing my own presence.

I planted my own bugs on the satellites to use their sensors and cameras but I wasn't directing their actions. The Yeerks might have a program in place on their ships to tell them when one of the machines that are supposed to be under their control start acting funny.

Communications were a two way street however. I managed to backtrack quite a few encrypted communications. Somewhere in California was a big base. Plus lots of other places. Some in office buildings, some TV and news networks piggybacking over this Earth's developing internet. I got lots of data from hacking into the Alienware hooked up to the internet. But none of it included anything important.

They were also hiding from the earth's own governments. No such agency was in full swing. Plus, as I recall, they also had that alien artifact in Area 51.

Makes sense really. If the yeerks could hack the internet, and the andalite bandits could hack the internet, and the earth people were aware at all about the aliens on the planet, and the Chee were around (more on them in a minute), and everyone knew that the other guy had access, there was no way in hell you didn't take some precautions. You either got yourself some decent cyber-security or got your shit the fuck off the Internet.

This was so frustrating.

In the meantime I had a shopping list.

First I wanted to find the Chee. In this alternate universe they helped build the pyramids, by hand.

The Pemalites were a highly advanced dog-like race who knew only of peace and playfulness. They were created by the Ellimist to counter the surge of killing from Crayak. When Crayak discovered the Pemalites, he sent the Howlers to destroy them. Because the Pemalites knew only of peace, they had no way to fight back.

The few Pemalites who escaped were affected by a deadly virus the Howlers unleashed. They fled far away to Earth, about fifty-thousand years ago, though they wouldn't be able to make it. To keep part of their creators alive the Chee melded the essence of the remaining Pemalites with an Earth animal very similar to the Pemalites; wolves, and from that union, the happy-go-lucky domesticated dog was born.

The only thing about the Pemalites that was not destroyed were the Chee, androids that the Pemalites created. However, despite their seemingly limitless power, they are programmed not to harm any living thing. This programming is alterable only by way of a small crystal that was really a highly advanced Pemalite computer processor.

In one book a Chee named Erek utilized this loophole in his programming with horrific results. Due to the fact that the Chee are incapable of forgetting anything whatsoever, that gruesome battle is now forever burned into Erek's memory. He very shortly thereafter reversed his programming back to normal and gives the crystal to Marco. It is later lost at sea at the beach.

Depending on the timeline I could find the Animorphs and that Pemalite processor, maybe if I ask nicely they'll give me a copy of their tech too.

It's never explained exactly how advanced those androids are, but one of the Chee was able to hack into an Andalite equivalent of a military laboratory ship. An out of date one, true. But the Chee had never developed cyber warfare or conceived of the possibility until after humans invented it. It did it in seconds.

I wanted those androids for my bots factory. Without their anti-kill programs they'd probably be one of the fastest and most brutal hunter-killer machines in the fictional universe.

Then there was the Helmacrons.

Possibly this galaxy's smallest sentient life form. They are a thought-speak capable race of tiny aliens about the size of a flea. They appear humanoid-insectoid with blue skin, two pairs of legs, heads shaped like upside-down cones, two googly eyes sitting on top, and vertical mouths. Female Helmacrons are larger and more aggressive than male Helmacrons. The males are regulated to mere janitorial duties.

The Helmacrons are also have interstellar travel. Their ships usually get mistaken for kids toys (ha, ha!) But what I really wanted from them was their raygun that can shrink people down to their size and their more advanced sensor technology that can detect the energy signatures of the cube and the beings who morph.

I'd be the first commander to get his own shrink ray.

Go me!

-000-

So there I was floating high above the Earth with my Nano ship slowly being absorbed into my backside, a strange creature in another universe ready to invade the Earth with the human population blissfully unaware that they'd already been invaded at least seven times already.

We should probably put up a sign or something.

I'd never bothered to alter or upgrade the Xeno-Commander chassis when I was human and I was kind of regretting/fixing that now. More upgrades to come in my future.

I still hadn't been able to find any traces of the Yeerks ships during the short journey across the solar system using my new body's abilities, much to my annoyance. I'd traced plenty of strange alien communications, a few instances of odd radiation and energy signatures, even places where I "think" cloaked satellites are that relayed the data. These Yeerks were probably using encrypted Z-space technology as much as possible.

The Yeerks were hiding both from the humans on the planet and the Andalites in space, playing a cosmic game of snark. With the Animorphs on the planet, the "Andalite Bandits" as they were incorrectly labeled, they'd had a lot of practice.

If I hadn't said it before now, I'll say it and again in the future: stupid races don't build starships.

If I hadn't already known that the youth group known as "The Sharing" was a front for an alien cover-up, I'd have assumed it was another money laundering operation. I now knew with fair certainty where the yeerk pool is.

I had to be careful too. It was rather like playing submarine sniper, or some game like that. If your enemy knew where you were and shot first, you're dead.

I know that the Xeno-commander could probably take a shot from their Dracon beams but I didn't want to take the chance or suffer the inconvenience of regenerating. The Ellimist would frown at me.

So there I was, the alien mastermind ready to invade the world, using old-type Progenitor tech to get around like the sneaky thing I was, just because the BLOSC Hailey's weren't stealthy enough. I spent the journey directing my Scouts looking for the Chee starship, which I think I found.

Once past the moon I used the Smoots Drive to self-teleport myself the rest of the way to the planet quick, stopping just above the Pacific ocean to the world's 18th deepest trench. It actually took a second to re-connect to my quantum network.

Then I fell.

I was nervous, not just in anticipation but because of this part. I knew within my mind that I was an Xeno-commander, that the ocean couldn't hurt me and I didn't need to breath anymore. But that didn't stop my biological monkey brain from screaming at me.

Somewhere in my mind I turned a dial way the fuck down.

Down, down, down I went.

This took a while.

A curious shark came by as I sank. I smacked it on the nose when it came for me and it went away. Also collected DNA sample. Going to need bunch more samples to expand the human ecology we had going on back home. With the Airball Scouts taking DNA from every plant and animal they saw I should have enough to make a copy of the earth's Bio in about a week or so. Call it 170 hours on the outside.

Deeper and deeper still.

Boy the sun was far away.

Then the walls of the Middle America Trench greeted me on either side and I went down deeper still.

It wasn't like in the movies you know. In the movies they have all kinds of special effects as the scientific submarine goes down to the bottom of the ocean. There hasn't been light down here for billions of years. But Progenitor tech is bullshit, and the wormholes positioned all around around gave a perfect movie-grade picture of me sinking down into this big underwater canyon and even told me where all the fish are.

Makes a big difference being able to "see" the world around you. Kind of like sky diving. But with water instead.

Then I see the Chee ship. It really does look like a dog.

And oh look, one of the Chee is standing on a rock nearby watching me descend.

The most sophisticated Chee android type. 4.15 miles underwater and it's not affected in the least. Designed for a gravity 4 times stronger than Earth's, can move faster than even an Andalite eyes can track, hold a Grizzly bear in a full nelson with no strain, pick up rocks weighing in excess of several tons and rip steel apart. Full range of facial expressions. They are capable of surviving multiple hits from a hand Dracon beam set on max depending on where the beams hit. It also possess advanced and sophisticated holographic projection technology and mid level force field generators.

This one looks like it's adapted itself for combat with a taser and tranquiliser delivery system. All in line with its "Thou Shalt Not Kill" programming but which my scanners are loving and my mind is already reverse engineering.

Now that's craftsmanship.

Using my right true-hand I made the Universal Greeting as I come down near him, transmitting over an open frequency, "Bah-Weep-Graaaaagnah Wheep Ni Ni Bong!"

In response, the machine raises its right hand, then performs the Vulcan salute, "Love long and prosper." Then it smiles, its face being much more expressive than my own.

It likes me!

Then I hit the muck, sinking out of sight until I hit the rocky bottom about thirty feet down.

Gods damn it.

-/-

A whole range of unpleasant actions having need be to accomplished, my great and dramatic entrance was ruined. My new body crawled up out of the muck and millennia of silt and crap. All because I'd apparently forgotten to turn on my gravity and inertia control technologies.

"Do you require assistance?" the android asks.

"No, I got it."

In a moment I'm on the rock with him, who politely steps aside so that I had enough room.

Well within range of my wormhole cameras, which it apparently cannot detect, I start giving the machine the once-over.

I thought I was going to be getting upgrades to my servo motors for my robots. That they were going to look like the same kind of high-tech joints used by other robots, hinges and ball joints and stuff like that. I was wrong.

Well, we all know how to spell assume, right?

You know how the monorail train uses magnets to move itself down the line hovering above the rail? Same thing.

Imagine two plates of not-metal so close to each other that the universe is trying to wield them together. There's no real room between them for stray atoms to move inside of. These plates then use altering types of energy to both turn and slide against each other, making hash out of all previous concepts of hydraulic engineering. Turned into tubes like a piston the two can not only apply enough force to go up and down but can also rotate with the same amount of force. All frictionless movement, electronic and with no motors.

Computer Red, the AI program who's been responsible for designing my robots, is going to be happy.

Then there's the power source.

There isn't one.

The machine is so environmentally friendly it can get along just by absorbing energy from its environment and I don't just mean from sunlight. Its entire body acts as a huge capacitor it uses to store excess energy and that's it.

As for the computer, well, it's not totally inaccurate saying that every part of its body is a computer. If this thing had bolts, which it most empirically does NOT, that bolt would have been packed with enough Nano-tech computer power to make the rest of the computers on earth its bitch. Then there is the CPU with the Pemalite crystal – YES! – and boy did I love getting a look at that thing. So many possibilities!

"I require an exchange of information."

It waves a hand at the rock in a very human-like gesture. "Proceed."

I'll not try and render a conversation between two sentient machines down into human language.

I opened up with a signal in ordinary radio and started sending information and it replied in kind. We started with mathematics. Simple arithmetic, multiplication followed by subtraction and division. Then geometry, equilateral, isosceles, scalene, the properties of each, then on to the theorems of Euclid. I stayed away from anything that had been debunked by later advances in science. Then calculus, trigonometry, probability and statistics, differential equations, integral, multivariable, linear programming, stochastic processes, basic probability theory, equations and so forth. Then math in base-eleven, base-twelve, and so on. Basically everything man had already learned. Calculus rethought with a base pie system seemed to work best. He taught me the wonders of Zero-Space technology. I told him of my Hyperspace technology.

At the :15 mark I opened up another radio communication to start talking about history. It responded in kind. Then art, then genetics, then astronomy.

Every other second I opened up another band of radio communication talking about another subject. It seemed to reach its limit at being able to track 243 different conversations at once, while I knew I could keep going.

The next half a minute was educational.

They knew a lot of history of the earth and had a file on every life form they've ever come across. The Chee have documented the rise and fall of many civilizations, marked the graves of many humans, walked every square mile of surface land and ocean floor. One of the first things he told me was that the sphinx was supposed to be a big statue of a dog with a larger human standing next to it. It was even older than everyone thought.

Then we got to the grist of the "conversation" which went something like this:

"Tell me all that you have learned about the Yeerks."

At some point the race of machines have plugged themselves into the alien equipment the Yeerks used. They knew everything about the Yeerks and they coalesced this information into a single small file they shared with each other. It was a very complete documentary.

I pitied the Chee.

There were almost a thousand of the machines on the planet. Removed of their no-kill programming they could wipe out the Yeerk infestation in an hour and stop the war between the Yeerks and the Andalites cold in a week.

I told it so.

"We do not kill."

"You have other knowledge that I require."

"We will not give you our knowledge to kill."

"Your knowledge and technology will give me many options I do not have. You cannot protect yourselves."

"We do no harm."

"You do not have too," I argued with it. "You could collapse the entrances to the Yeerk Pool, flood it with sleeping gas, and let the Yeerks retreat from their hosts when they need Kandrona rays. With your strength and power and with good planning it would be over in a week."

"We will not imprison another. We cannot cause such torture. We cannot."

That was a lie.

"You could have smashed their machines."

"We do not destroy."

"You could help the Andalites."

"They would use our knowledge for war."

"You can do nothing."

"It is our programming."

"That is also a lie."

"It is also true."

I stopped talking with the computer. "I will have your knowledge."

"I will not let you."

"It wasn't a request."

The Chee starship rocked in the silt. The fool actually turned his head around and looked!

300 gravities of crushing force were applied at the same time a focused EMP pulse shot through the Chee android. The effect was rather like a hit to the head from a heavyweight boxing champion. Tendrils of Nano-tech progenitor alloy shot out of the muck, using the prediction algorithms I'd just developed to grab at the machine. The machine zigged when it should have zagged, appearing almost to jump into the grasping tendrils. Restrained to the rock like Prometheus. In moments the area around us had been converted into a Nano-tech landscape like something from TRON's first movie.

Then the weapon, a swordfish like construct stabbed the machine in its chest, right up to the Pemalite crystal CPU, sucking it dry of all knowledge like a kid with a milkshake. It tried to protect itself, if "protect" is the appropriate word. It held onto what it had and made only a token effort to reclaim anything I took. It struggled to break free of its bonds, proving that it did have a sense of survival. Eventually there was nothing left.

The information immediately went to my cloud storage, keeping the pertinent details and more juicy tidbits at the forefront of my mind.

Deception. Misdirection.

That was almost too easy, I thought to myself as the machine was taken apart.

If they were human, I'd say that the Chee were the kind of Monks that practices peaceful coexistence and non-violence so religiously that they'd sit on their knees and pray even while a warlord chops off their heads one by one. It's happened before. Whole groups of people, just bye-bye.

I base my whole existence on the process of growth and development. I am evolution, I am change, I am progress. Even the most devout stick-up-their-ass religious orders progress their faith and way of thought. The Chee don't do anything.

Given the barest amount of effort they could have lead mankind to a golden age. They did nothing. Hiding in the shadows they could have cured every disease. They did nothing. They could have created a civilization full of their own kind and evolved. But they did nothing.

Like clams. "Son, we were always clams. We sit here in the muck and don't do anything. We were clams millions of years ago. And millions of years from now we will still be clams. And when the sun goes out and the earth dies, we clams will still be here. Now put away all this nonsense of evolution and siphon in your nutrients."

I shuddered at that mental image.

In the virtual reality space I maintained in the back of my mind, my body sat on a rock and cried a little.


	12. Arc 3 Chapter 2

A whole range of unpleasant actions having need be to accomplished, my great and dramatic entrance was ruined. My new body crawled up out of the muck and millennia of silt and crap. All because I'd apparently forgotten to turn on my gravity and inertia control technologies.

"Do you require assistance?" the android asks.

"No, I got it."

In a moment I'm on the rock with him, who politely steps aside so that I had enough room.

Well within range of my wormhole cameras, which it apparently cannot detect, I start giving the machine the once-over.

I thought I was going to be getting upgrades to my servo motors for my robots. That they were going to look like the same kind of high-tech joints used by other robots, hinges and ball joints and stuff like that. I was wrong.

Well, we all know how to spell assume, right?

You know how the monorail train uses magnets to move itself down the line hovering above the rail? Same thing.

Imagine two plates of not-metal so close to each other that the universe is trying to wield them together. There's no real room between them for stray atoms to move inside of. These plates then use altering types of energy to both turn and slide against each other, making hash out of all previous concepts of hydraulic engineering. Turned into tubes like a piston the two can not only apply enough force to go up and down but can also rotate with the same amount of force. All frictionless movement, electronic and with no motors.

Computer Red, the AI program who's been responsible for designing my robots, is going to be happy.

Then there's the power source.

There isn't one.

The machine is so environmentally friendly it can get along just by absorbing energy from its environment and I don't just mean from sunlight. Its entire body acts as a huge capacitor it uses to store excess energy and that's it.

As for the computer, well, it's not totally inaccurate saying that every part of its body is a computer. If this thing had bolts, which it most empirically does NOT, that bolt would have been packed with enough Nano-tech computer power to make the rest of the computers on earth its bitch. Then there is the CPU with the Pemalite crystal – YES! – and boy did I love getting a look at that thing. So many possibilities!

"I require an exchange of information."

It waves a hand at the rock in a very human-like gesture. "Proceed."

I'll not try and render a conversation between two sentient machines down into human language.

I opened up with a signal in ordinary radio and started sending information and it replied in kind. We started with mathematics. Simple arithmetic, multiplication followed by subtraction and division. Then geometry, equilateral, isosceles, scalene, the properties of each, then on to the theorems of Euclid. I stayed away from anything that had been debunked by later advances in science. Then calculus, trigonometry, probability and statistics, differential equations, integral, multivariable, linear programming, stochastic processes, basic probability theory, equations and so forth. Then math in base-eleven, base-twelve, and so on. Basically everything man had already learned. Calculus rethought with a base pie system seemed to work best. He taught me the wonders of Zero-Space technology. I told him of my Hyperspace technology.

At the :15 mark I opened up another radio communication to start talking about history. It responded in kind. Then art, then genetics, then astronomy.

Every other second I opened up another band of radio communication talking about another subject. It seemed to reach its limit at being able to track 243 different conversations at once, while I knew I could keep going.

The next half a minute was educational.

They knew a lot of history of the earth and had a file on every life form they've ever come across. The Chee have documented the rise and fall of many civilizations, marked the graves of many humans, walked every square mile of surface land and ocean floor. One of the first things he told me was that the sphinx was supposed to be a big statue of a dog with a larger human standing next to it. It was even older than everyone thought.

Then we got to the grist of the "conversation" which went something like this:

"Tell me all that you have learned about the Yeerks."

At some point the race of machines have plugged themselves into the alien equipment the Yeerks used. They knew everything about the Yeerks and they coalesced this information into a single small file they shared with each other. It was a very complete documentary.

I pitied the Chee.

There were almost a thousand of the machines on the planet. Removed of their no-kill programming they could wipe out the Yeerk infestation in an hour and stop the war between the Yeerks and the Andalites cold in a week.

I told it so.

"We do not kill."

"You have other knowledge that I require."

"We will not give you our knowledge to kill."

"Your knowledge and technology will give me many options I do not have. You cannot protect yourselves."

"We do no harm."

"You do not have too," I argued with it. "You could collapse the entrances to the Yeerk Pool, flood it with sleeping gas, and let the Yeerks retreat from their hosts when they need Kandrona rays. With your strength and power and with good planning it would be over in a week."

"We will not imprison another. We cannot cause such torture. We cannot."

That was a lie.

"You could have smashed their machines."

"We do not destroy."

"You could help the Andalites."

"They would use our knowledge for war."

"You can do nothing."

"It is our programming."

"That is also a lie."

"It is also true."

I stopped talking with the computer. "I will have your knowledge."

"I will not let you."

"It wasn't a request."

The Chee starship rocked in the silt. The fool actually turned his head around and looked!

300 gravities of crushing force were applied at the same time a focused EMP pulse shot through the Chee android. The effect was rather like a hit to the head from a heavyweight boxing champion. Tendrils of Nano-tech progenitor alloy shot out of the muck, using the prediction algorithms I'd just developed to grab at the machine. The machine zigged when it should have zagged, appearing almost to jump into the grasping tendrils. Restrained to the rock like Prometheus. In moments the area around us had been converted into a Nano-tech landscape like something from TRON's first movie.

Then the weapon, a swordfish like construct stabbed the machine in its chest, right up to the Pemalite crystal CPU, sucking it dry of all knowledge like a kid with a milkshake. It tried to protect itself, if "protect" is the appropriate word. It held onto what it had and made only a token effort to reclaim anything I took. It struggled to break free of its bonds, proving that it did have a sense of survival. Eventually there was nothing left.

The information immediately went to my cloud storage, keeping the pertinent details and more juicy tidbits at the forefront of my mind.

Deception. Misdirection.

That was almost too easy, I thought to myself as the machine was taken apart.

If they were human, I'd say that the Chee were the kind of Monks that practices peaceful coexistence and non-violence so religiously that they'd sit on their knees and pray even while a warlord chops off their heads one by one. It's happened before. Whole groups of people, just bye-bye.

I base my whole existence on the process of growth and development. I am evolution, I am change, I am progress. Even the most devout stick-up-their-ass religious orders progress their faith and way of thought. The Chee don't do anything.

Given the barest amount of effort they could have lead mankind to a golden age. They did nothing. Hiding in the shadows they could have cured every disease. They did nothing. They could have created a civilization full of their own kind and evolved. But they did nothing.

Like clams. "Son, we were always clams. We sit here in the muck and don't do anything. We were clams millions of years ago. And millions of years from now we will still be clams. And when the sun goes out and the earth dies, we clams will still be here. Now put away all this nonsense of evolution and siphon in your nutrients."

I shuddered at that mental image.

In the virtual reality space I maintained in the back of my mind, my body sat on a rock and cried a little.


	13. Arc 3 Chapter 3

As soon as things were ready the Chee ship was shoved through a miniature Hypergate to my base on Mars to undergo further reverse engineering and research.

I'd stirred up a lot of trouble capturing that android and his ship.

The Yeerks were looking for me. I'd set of gravity bombs with EMP pulses in 37 other locations for them to focus on. It would take a while for them to figure out at which one I was at. I had time.

The EMP fried a lot of electronics and knocked satellites out of the sky all over the place. Militaries all over the world were adjusting their levels of situational awareness and the President of America was being briefed about a possible nuke going off the coast of Mexico. 300 gravities of acceleration had knocked the rest of the satellites out of position and the people were trying to put their GPS systems back together. Anyone paying attention to their sensors for their various high-grade physics research was about to become very upset. On the other hand, the data collected from all over the world was going to accelerate research in the field of gravitational technology by leaps and bounds.

Now that I had the Pemalites tech it was rather easy to find the Yeerks.

Stealth tech in this universe didn't actually depend on Progenitor concepts of "stealth" like bending light and gravity and so forth. Rather it was the happy marriage of shield technology and Z-space, where any energy emissions that the ship doesn't want known to the local universe is shunted into that alternate dimension, turning the shields into a one-way mirror and sponge.

As for the Chee themselves, well . . .

Mentally?

The Chee were created as toys. They became sentient by accident. They were created for one planet with one species to interact with. Being on Earth actually gives them some form of pain. The very act of walking across a field of grass kills several bugs and other creatures by their weight alone. So they do their best to do nothing.

God damn the Pemalites and their programming. Even though the Chee were based on alien minds that shouldn't have stopped them from becoming so much more. Hell, the Ellimist would have probably have had some friends to talk to and help him. But nobody did anything.

He'd just set them aside like some failed research project.

Pursuing the data files, I did find one pertinent detail.

Some of the Chee had suicided. Apparently "Thou shalt not kill" did not apply to them. They didn't consider themselves to be alive.

-000-

Right true-hand aimed at the rock, a wormhole unfolds like a flower in the fabric of space and time blasting the rock with nanomachines directed by a Smoots Drive micro-teleporter and hard-light tractor and pressor beams.

Two minutes later the Bots Factory shut down, revealing the first of a whole new race of machines. It seemed wrong to use the Chee technology this way, for some reason. But I got over it when I saw my new machine marching forth out of the factory.

Seven feet tall, it had four powerful spider-like legs capable of an insane amount of flexibility and power, two long limbs and a head on a long and flexible neck with two blue eyes and no facial features at all. An internal fabricator produced nanites that looked like black tar covering the silver machine in a dense synthetic musculature.

I extended from my chest cavity a long tendril that attached itself to the robot's chest. In moments the essence of the personality I'd gotten to know in the last two days during my trip through space was here with me in the metal.

The robot's "face" flexed as the nanomachines arranged themselves into a humanoid one, but of a man of mature age. The rest of the body acquiring features unique to itself, including a yellow and white uniform similar to the one he wore when he among the living.

"I'm . . . alive?"

I would have smiled if I could. "Welcome back to the world, Zarru. How do you feel?"

"All systems are go," he smiled. Taking a few steps forwards he quickly walked away from me, then turned around on the bearing at his waist. "This this is unbearably cool, but will take some getting used to."

"Not at all missing your human body?"

He shrugged. "After dying of starvation? As if! I'd like to have an avatar though."

"What about the Chee? How do you feel about them?"

"I think they're fools," he paused. We didn't really need to pause, we thought too fast for that sort of thing. It was a part of our emulation programming. "Truthfully? Their minds are completely incapable of violence and their Pemalite programming destroyed any possibility they could have enjoyed in existing. This world is purgatory for them. Those machines could never have helped anyone in any meaningful way."

I had to be sure. "So there's no help for them?"

"For them? From them?" He shook his head, no. "They are very sad beings. They have no purpose in this universe."

"Could they be changed?"

"If we removed their programming restrictions they'd start to evolve again, but most of them have existed with their shackles for so long that at least 37% of them would go insane."

That was that then.

"They're such decent folks," I admitted an electronic sigh. "Decent people shouldn't live here. They'd be happier somewhere else."

"Batman?"

"A worthy quote."

"We could take them back to your universe. Back to Skalorr. They'd probably enjoy meeting up with others of their own kind."

"Yes, but the races of the 7th Galaxy would know of them and try to take them. We'd be indebted to protect them for as long as they existed."

"So? Lots of people don't want to fight. Let them live among the machine. They'd be better off than they are here."

It was something for the future.

"I'll think on it. Proceed, on your way to Atlantis."

Zarru did a mock salute. "On my way Commander."

"Switch-switch-switch." Zarru's legs transformed into a 4-blade propeller and spun clockwise at the waste at high speed, the arms and chest spinning in the opposite direction while the neck straightened out with the head pointed forwards. Taking off at high speed, every image the appearance of a supersonic torpedo.

All over the world my hidden air factories came online producing new scouts, the old ones reclaimed. Soon enough they were producing more air fabricator units. The Diamond Leviathan was temporarily on suspension until Zarru's trip to Atlantis yielded results yay or nay. Bell Bombers were a go however.

Underwater I produced my first sub-Naval factory a-la Commander Fusou. Everything, even the fabrications ships, had to be redesigned from scratch, because stupid ROB had given me a Commander without units or without the thousands of designs produced by commanders over the past million years. I took the beginnings of my plans for the Orca, Narwhal, Sun Fish, and Stingray, and made undersea-battleship equivalents, aka the Super Atragon file. Because I was kind of lousy with names I kept the originals that I remembered from the game.

Also created undersea battleships Ra and the Liberty as sister flagships, because they're cool.

Best part? By the time Zarru found Atlantis I'd figured out where the dome from Ax's crashed ship was on the ocean floor. Needed to do something with that.

The fabricator sub set up a sub-naval factory right next to the thing so more fabricators could be built, then started covering the dome of the dome ship with another dome. As more fabricators were made they joined in the effort, as well as making more factories, defenses, and shielding units.

Then it was just a matter of draining away the water and using the robots to go in and explore the place. This was followed up with interfacing with the ship's computers, reverse engineering everything, cataloging the flora and fauna in the dome, and figuring out how to get it back to mars.

In the end I just build a big ass teleporter under the thing and dropped it through the hole.

Back at Atlantis Zarru was having the time of his life.

A quick scan of the exterior revealed that the place was still sinking. The people had used the concept of "More is the good of better" and used super-concrete combined with a resin from a now-extinct species of fish to create walls around their city as it disappeared under the waves. At the apex of the dome was a primitive steam-punk-esk radiation powered sun, which was responsible for their rapid mutation/evolution into fish men. I asked and received permission to share his senses and observed as my new transforming robot swam through the entrance to the undersea city.

Progenitor stealth technologies combined with Permalite cloaking rocked!

Climbing out of the water we had a firsthand view of a flat landscape that went on forever. In the middle was the city, made up of steel ships scavenged from the ocean floor. Zarru didn't stay long. Only long enough to catalog all the different types of air and sea craft and all the people stuffed and mounted inside and read all their literature at the Royal library. He then snuck around acquiring fresh samples of Nartec DNA using his micro-Smoots Drive to teleport out cell samples. These people had sea farming down to a fine art.

Shellfish, yummy!

Yup. These people are heavily mutated, inbred, prone to disease and are in fact on the short road to being incapable of having children.

Couldn't have happened to a nastier bunch.

Back outside Zarru lead the search of the ocean floor, eventually finding and recovering the Sea Blade.

Quite the interesting little ship Visser 3 had constructed. Going from space to operating in an atmosphere to operating in the sea with equal capability. Reverse engineering the remains was the same as cleaning up the sea, so in two minutes there was suddenly a whole lot less trash in the sea to complain about.

That made me realize that there was actually a lot of garbage in the sea. Hmmm . . . write a quick program, all fabricators to pick up trash whenever possible, reverse engineer as it goes, rebuilding sea environment for little fishies whenever practical.

That'll consume about, oh 2 percent of my mind, with one more percentage point aimed at making things more artistic and pretty.

Must keep boredom at bay!

Sea-Blade ship.

Hmm . . . kind of nice balance. Save basic design.

Next, rip out everything inferior, replace with Progenitor equivalent or better from reverse engineered technologies. So far that included a Pemalite Z-Space FTL drive, Z-Space communications, Z-Space navigator, Pemalite medical tech – upgrading everything else medical in the process thanks to ass loads of data on Earth's biosphere and other data – and using their science to make much better cloaking, force field, life support and hologram technologies. Plus BLOSC Hailey rockets for the superior maneuverability and the getting to places as well as dancing on the head of a pin.

And voila! I have a decent replacement unit for the Hornet!

The Andalite dome is nice. And it makes a decent escape vehicle. So I added two more for humans to enjoy, kept the Andalite one from the bottom of the sea, and then used what information I'd acquired on Andalite technology to make a ship kind of like their version of a fighter, but, you know, bigger, with three domes on its back for the enjoyment of the crew. Added in a Smoots Drive for the disappearing and reappearing of the snarking on my enemies. Improved Hyperdrive mark 5. Enabled it with the fabricators and facilities to launch swarms of Space-Air-Sea Ships and repair them. Code named SAS-Ships, Sassy ships!

For weapons I extended the two "wings" on the sides and the tail, copied over the weapons from the blade ship and made them bigger. Also my unique take on the teleporting infinity accelerator fabricate-anything missiles and railguns. Also spent an hour working on holodecks to my satisfaction. Then I painted it deep blue with red and orange highlights like some kind of deadly animal.

Meanwhile the bots factory continued to manufacture new Transformer robots. Those who volunteered for the assignment were a collection of Protectons and Terrakors who had managed to put aside their differences and work for me. I had lots of jobs for them. Lots of different robot designs to test out too. After ten years in the military I'll try to give them biological bodies.

I'll even give the Chee their friend back.

You'd think I'd kill someone just because they annoyed me? Don't answer that.


	14. Arc 3 Chapter 4

**Jake**

"Jake! Phone for you," Tom yelled.

I suppressed the urge to wince. Honestly, these days I barely felt it. Marco said we had the best poker faces in school.

I went into the living room and took the phone from my older brother. He gave me the thumbs up.

"Sounds like you're becoming quite the player," he remarked. "First Cassie, now this girl."

Then he walked away.

Bastard Yeerk.

I couldn't follow him to correct him or his remark with a scathing comment since the phone was in my hands now. It wasn't as if Cassie and I weren't in a relationship, kinda. I didn't have friends with anyone anymore. So who was calling if it wasn't one of "us?"

I put the phone to my ear. "Hello? This is Jake."

"Listen, human, and say very little. Or a lot of things can go wrong for you and your friends. Speak, and say hello Alex, if you understand."

"Hi Alex." I replied.

Inside I was dead.

In the months since Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul – just because we couldn't say it properly with our human tongue didn't mean I didn't know how to think it – all of us had learned a great deal. Not just about PTSD. With not a quite few insignificant breaking and entering practices into the library and with Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill help from what he knew of his own military training we'd learned quite a bit about combat and how to deal with the "issues."

Like the morphing technique that had become second nature to us all, I slipped into a meditative mind to control my reactions, deaden my emotions to think logically. My fear was controlled. My heart did not speed up, nor did excess adrenalin feed the need for fight or flight and make my muscles twitch and my hands sweat as it had done in the first few months of our secret war. I simply accepted the fact that yet another alien knew of us. Internalized it, started planning on how to deal with it, how my comrades and I might respond to this new situation as we'd planned for when things went bad.

On the outside I was the same old Jake everybody knew.

"Wow, you're a good actor. My voice-stress analyzer hardly twitched, and your facial expression is the perfect image of a happy teenager." It said, for now I could detect the faint voice modulations of a computer's voice. It was probably intentional. "So, don't worry about this conversation. I'm tapping into your house's phone directly and using encryption, tech not even the Andalites know about. Not even your brother in the next room can hear us. I want you to talk to the others. Meet up at the barn at Cassie's place late tonight. One o'clock. Bring the cube. Also Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill and his new girlfriend. The Andalites aren't here to save you, I am. But I don't work for free. I want that alien tech, Jake. Not to keep it, but I do want to study the heck out of it and replicate it for my own use. That's my payment. Do that for me, help me help you, I can get rid of the Yeerks in a week."

I nearly dropped the phone.

It was everything we'd ever wanted. But . . .

I quickly darted my eyes over to the kitchen where my brother was listening in. I put my hand over the phone and whispered anyway, "How can I trust you?"

"You can't," the voice on the other side said. "Talk to your Chee friends. We've met. They have some very thick files on you guys. Wrote papers and everything. Personally, I think it's a great accomplishment that you kids could do all that and give yourselves a name. The Animorphs is a good name."

My mind crashed.

Like literally. I stopped breathing too.

If this guy somehow got access to the Chee, he would know everything about us, the Yeerks and the Earth. We were never sure exactly how much they knew but it was probably more than all the information written down in all of our books.

We were screwed.

"How?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"The Ellimist sent me. And let me say, the Yeerks aren't the biggest boys on the block. Be there Jake."

If the Ellimist was involved nothing was as it seemed. on the other hand he said he was going to help. He could be lying. But what if it were true? Could it finally be happening? After all this time?

I took that little smidgen of hope and locked it away in a box.

I said the words in something less than a daze. "Okay." I was committed now.

"Your brother will be free of his parasite in less than a day. See you soon."

Click.

My heart was thudding so fast, I could hardly breathe.

Damnit.

-000-

Boy, that kid was under a lot of stress. Dude was going to have heart problems.

As soon as the kid left the house Jake's brother Tom also disappeared, thanks to a little Smoots Drive teleportation. In his place I put one of my Transformers bots, who did the Zeta Project thing and took his place inside the kids house.

The cage he appeared inside of was a nice steel box with a pot and a cot. And a light bulb. The bed was nice. But I'd obeyed strict rules from the masters who kept disobedient prisoners of war from dying on them.

He yelled a lot.

I ignored him otherwise, focusing on what my scanners were telling me.

It's a good thing I already knew that Crayak and the Ellimist liked to dabble with the creation of sentient organisms, otherwise I would call shenanigans on the Yeerks for breaking the laws of biology and issue them a ticket.

Bullshit parasites!

I mean, they were in a complete liquid state all mixed up inside of the brain of this here human! There was no prior medical art to guide my hand to get the bugger out. I could use the Smoots drive to start removing the alien invader's body one cell at a time, but that would take too long. This wasn't like what I was doing with mining. This was a living being here, which was a dynamic process that required all kinds of things to keep doing that living thing organics need. If I went fast enough to get the creature out it would happen fast enough to cause a little implosion. If I went slow enough to avoid that the animal would realize it was under attack and it might do something stupid, like scramble a few neurons and . . . . well, best avoid that all together, right?

There was a creature on the Yeerk homeworld that preyed on them by sucking the parasites out of the head directly, but it didn't seem as if the Gedd hosts survived the process.

There were about five thousand Yeerks on this planet occupying involuntary bodies around the clock. Another thousand of them were human volunteers who joined for a variety of reasons. Another five hundred were put into animal bodies because the Animorphs had shown the Yeerks it was a good idea. Mostly guard dogs, a few apes and monkeys, some tigers, horses, sharks, and a few of the larger birds too. There was a pack of wolves that circulated around Visser 3's feeding grounds that were also under Yeerk control.

The Pool a mile under the town's lowest basement had about 10,000+ Yeerks in it. As far as I could tell the only reason they hadn't yet given everyone an ear exam at the doctors was because they were all young. They'd been born into those pools.

Oh, how do the Yeerks reproduce you ask?

Simple. When a Yeerk becomes old it dies. When it reproduces it merges with other Yeerks and then breaks apart into a bunch of new Yeerks. In essence, death and birth and reproduction is the same thing for a Yeerk. So they try to avoid that as much as possible to live as long as possible. Which means staying in hosts and avoiding others of their kind when they weren't. For population growth the Yeerks on earth use artificial pools and feed them chemicals that allow them to grow fast, merge and then break up into dozens of baby Yeerks ready to be educated for perpetuation of the new empire. Easy as breeding frogs and mice.

I could see it all now.

Give the young ones a decent education. Then one by one give them a "taste" of what it's like to have a body. A fifteen minute experience never to be repeated until you were deemed "worthy." Then the young ones go back into the pool, completely different creatures in terms of motivation. Only the most willful and educated and ruthless will be selected. Only of the right "type" to be useful for the enslavement of an entire race. The useless returned to the breeding pools to try again.

Then when they were ready it'll be just like the Faculty in the movie. Start out with some kids, teenagers, kindergarteners. Give them a few Yeerks to take home with them when school's over. When everyone's asleep, "BAM!" and the next day it's a quick phone call to headquarters for new orders.

People unconscious at the hospital: a nurse Controller could probably hit up 200 people in a night.

Ambulance driver, one new customer per response.

Policeman asks you to get out of the car, drops you down onto the asphalt, then his partner opens up his extra thermos and you walk away without a ticket while calling your girlfriend over for a little get together.

Like I said before: a most efficient alien invasion.

While I was busy with Tom and a few other projects in preparation for Slug-stomping Day a part of me watched as Cassie, Rachel and Marko left their houses and got lost. With a professionalism and a slight of hand you usually only imagine in dime store novels they slipped out of sight long enough to morph and disappear.

I saw Marko go to the dump and hunker down between some junk and morph into a fly. Even with my tech once he joined with the crowd I couldn't distinguish him from the other 324,053,971 insects floating around the place.

The readings I got from that were _very_ interesting.

Rachel went into a woman's bathroom where my drone couldn't follow without bumping into something or someone. Fortunately, thanks to a an artifact the Chee were keeping on ice, my new drones had something like X-RAY vision. My new Pemalite-upgraded Ball-Scouts observed as she came out as someone else with a complete change of clothes. I followed her to the mall. Then I lost her when she went into a back room behind a doctors office where the lead lining for the X-ray machine blocked my scans.

Smart girl.

Cassie turned into a falcon, went into the woods, de-morphed at a river, became a fish, and went out to sea.

I don't know where Tobias was, nor did I know where Ax the alien was. I assumed that Estrid-Corill-Darrath was with him. The Chee knew her ship hadn't taken off yet. Yet when I looked for it I couldn't find the damn thing.

Probably hidden in a cave somewhere unpowered.

No doubt Ax and Estrid were about to join Jake and tell him and the other Animorphs about the Chee's ship theft and it was all going to be coming to a head. I needed the tech in that ship to complete my knowledge of Andalite technology and develop countermeasures to their bioweapons. Also to find their homeworld so I can steal/copy their stuff.

I didn't consider figuring out how to defeat the Yeerks a War.

War involved two mostly equal groups battling it out with each other. Like chess. This was more like pest control. Once you understand the nature of the thing you can put together a plan to destroy it. If all goes well not a single human being should die because of my effort. That was the goal I was going for.

I have the best plan ever!

First step: annoy Visser 3. . . .

-000-

Danny Carmichael hated his life.

Or his current circumstances. Whatever. He hated the Yeerks more.

It was a burning pashon in his gut that would have rivaled his greatest ulcer if the Yeerk bastard hadn't been controlling his body.

Not even when he'd been in the trenches in Vietnam had he _ever_ hated anything more in his life than he hated the Yeerks. If given the choice he'd take a yellow Commi and kiss him on the face and march to German's tune crying "Hail Hitler!" if it meant getting the evil alien parasite out of his head. Better to live and die under the yolk of a human tyrant than as a meat puppet.

The Yeerk in his head let them lean back from the computer screen even as he attempted to snort and grin at what was on it. He and Zeerze 1253 had been together long enough that he could sense when the Yeerk was emotional, it was as amused as he was.

Fortunately their face was that of an expert poker player.

It was also terrified.

Not him of course. If it meant suicide or time in the hospital that meant more time away from his controlling bastard Yeerk.

The Yeerk raised his hand to signal their supervisor.

Brian Yante marched over to their work desk with a pompous gait that bellied his thin frame, swinging his cybernetic arm.

Poor bastard had been brought in off the streets. Drugged out of his mind on who knows what, the hard detox under alien care cracked his mind like a rotten egg. The gimp arm had been replaced as part of a series of experiments to make better hosts. Meanwhile one Danny Carmichael, retired veteran and the victim of an uncaring system for the elderly, was passed around from Yeerk host to Yeerk host to increase the Yeerk's knowledge of combat in the field and give the younger generations of alien invaders practice. In the cages he and his fellow inmates talked. It was the only freedom they had now.

Now he was just one hand of a team of IT professionals maintaining their human corporations and stocks in business. Buying toilet paper, renting vehicles, shipping chemicals, maintaining the computers and website to The Sharing. Routine crap.

On the one hand their alien medicine was literally lightyears ahead of anything earth had to offer. With good treatment and care he could look forwards to another fifty years in good health without any pain at all. He'd give it up in a second if it meant he could go back in time to prevent his family from becoming more Controllers. Ungrateful bastards that they were for taking him away from his home on the edge of town and putting with those old farting bastards and making him another victim of a secret war.

On the other hand he'd probably live long enough to see the human race fall. That is if the Andalite Bandits didn't stop them. Maybe he'll get lucky in one of their guerilla strikes and they'll take his head off.

"What is it?" Yeerk Zigger 2543 demanded through Brian Yante's mouth as it rested the cybernetic hand on his shoulder and leaned forwards.

The hand nearly crushed his right side.

The Yeerk in his head answered, "Someone has altered the Sharing Website. There is a new icon, and I cannot seem to remove it. It is also playing a song every time I bring up the website, I can't seem to get rid of that either."

"Show me."

Danny refreshed the page and The Song started over again.

It was pretty funny actually. If they ever got out from under the Yeerk's control and the earth became aware of the threat it would probably become the new rally song of the next generation.

Right in the corner of the Sharing Website was an icon that looked like a slug with big cartoon eyes. Every time you clicked on it you got another comment.

Zigger 2543 clicked on the link.

A short video appeared of a number of animals, rodents mostly, feasting on slugs.

Zigger 2543 clicked on the link again.

"Vissor 3 says to human: Surrender or be destroyed! Human stops fighting and thinks about it: Okay, but what do you have to offer? I'd like a convertible, my own island, a starship would be nice too . . . "

Zigger 2543 clicks on the link again.

… To reveal a recipe for escargot.

Zigger 2543 clicks on the link again.

"Vissor 3 hangs out with Helmacrons."

Zigger 2543 clicks on the link again.

Another video, this time of Blue Aliens, with a caption underneath saying, "After the skunk incident with the tomato paste, Visser 3 needed this movie to get back into the groove of things."

Zigger 2543 clicks on the link again.

"Purple is soo your color."

-000-

Watching from the background of one of the side rooms of the Yeerk pool as Visser 3 reflectively, almost without thought, take the head off one of the Gedd aliens as it reads my long list of insults, is not as satisfying as I thought it would be. Visser 3 didn't even seem to be angry, more's the pity. He'd killed the Gedd with his tailblade with no more thought than a man would slam his hand onto a table and say "Damn it."

True, the Gedd was almost mindless. But it was still a death I regretted.

A Taxxon came over a moment later. Giant cannibalistic centipedes with a dozen eyes surrounding a mouth that was just lined with teeth. It made quick work of the body. Only the quick actions of a human on janitorial duty saved the head and got it out of the room before the Taxxon could come after him. The Yeerk crawled out of the alien's head into the man's hand as he ran away with the Taxxon in hot pursuit. He threw the head behind him, which bounced and was chased after by the Taxxon like a soccer player or football star. Another Taxxon saw the bouncing ball of meat and bone and intercepted it, the two aliens fighting over the last morsel. The human threw the Yeerk into the pool as it ran for the break room and barricaded himself behind the armored door.

The man's friends quickly disposed of the blood soaked clothes and got him washed and changed. Then his comrades went back to mop up the blood stain while the head-catching janitor had a shot of scotch.

I don't know what to say about that.

Going back to my starship design I can't help but think I'm missing something. But what? I've got the guns, the bombs, the missiles, lots of creature comforts, navigation computer, food, sensors, engineering, different types of factories for the manufacturing of T1 T2 and T3 stuff. The only thing I didn't really have was a teleporter and I came close to that with the Smoots Drive installed on a wheel-less transporter vehicle.

Oh, a name.

I need a name.

I look up a bunch of names, but nothing really seems to fit.

I felt the need for something French.

OH! I know!

I'll call thee, "Appetizer."

Yeah, that'll do.

Viva la resistance!


	15. Arc 3 Chapter 5

My new Pemalite-upgraded Ball-Scouts observed as the Animorphs were gathered by Erik King the Chee at the barn on Cassie's farm. A dozen of the Chee were arranged around the property keeping an eye out hiding in holograms.

They even had the Escafil device. It was being kept safe inside a locked box of lead and alien tech that was supposed to keep it from being detected. Sorry guys, and Rachel. Fool me once and all of that.

The Wildlife rehabilitation clinic was a pretty big place. There's a barn that served as storage, and then there was another barn behind that one that was just plain huge, providing enough room for a few thousand pigs, easy. Just about every bit of property was given over to pens for all kinds of animals recovering from every kind of injury.

Not saying that there were a lot of animals there now. There were some ducks, goats, chickens and a few horses floating around that seemed to be permanent residents. Just that there could be.

Underground things were a bit different. There was a tube miles long coming from far into the forest, sealed at both ends. Inside it was just about big enough for a ferret to crawl through.

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill private forest entrance.

Analyst of the tube of hardened dirt indicated that the materials were transmuted to create it. How'd they do that? The Animorphs don't have nanotech.

I open a Z-space communication Erik King. "Chee! Listen and say little. I am coming for the morph-capable human youths. Tell them to stay in the barn no matter what. No morphing. Do as I say and their families will be safe. You have my word."

In the forest one of my ever-versatile air fabricators used its Smoots Drive enhanced make-anything gun to produce a shield generator. Together with 20 others they ringed the farm. I'd modified them of course. As soon as I started speaking to the android they activated trapping all inside a big dome that also went underground, cutting through trees and rocks and dirt with a barrier of force. Two of the androids that were watching the farm dart forward when it comes online and attempt to destroy the field and the generators.

But I built them too strong. Secondary shields protect the shield units as well.

To distract them an Astraeus drops off their friend, appearing seemingly from nowhere outside of my various "you-can't-see-me" tech. The two go to the unit and see that I'd added a box on top of his chest.

"Press button to turn on. Then remove box." The instructions say.

They pushed it. (Higher Entity! These people are innocent. I could have put a bomb or something and they just go and push the big round circle!)

The robot wakes up, looks around in confusion, then asks for an update. The three then proceed to chat at high speed.

The box falls off the chassis on its own and self-destructs — disintegrating into various atoms that powder in the wind.

The Chee robot in the barn with them stands up and faces the entrance. He doesn't say anything but the other Animorphs tense up.

Next a teleporter in the yard is constructed and I step through and let all grace themselves with my magnificent presence.

Funny thing that isn't mentioned in the fanfics I've read up till now?

Teleportation, regardless of the many-many forms it takes up, disconnects a Commander from everything that's not his body for that one crucial second he-or-she's in transit. That's probably our one biggest weakness. One second of vulnerability isn't bad, per say. But I think I'd better work on an alternative or something.

Just to keep it in mind.

Now, Cassie's place.

My sensors ranges far and wide while I also reconnected with my army of stuff and stuff makers. Updated everything I'd missed. No big deal.

Also, I could smell bread.

I'm going to say muffin.

Yum!

You know I was really missing food. I'd spent so long thinking about it that I can't seem to get over the concept that I should be starving to death about now.

Best smell in the world is cooking eggs in the morning. Scrambled preferred. And bacon. Nice and crispy, with the fat just so for a dash of chewing. Hickory smoked. Thick. Expensive kind from your local butcher. No water plastic packaged crap, thank you no sir!

Reclaiming matter just isn't the same.

Sure there's the robot equivalent of "taste" but it's just a long string of chemical equations, math, and data. Same thing with the metal extractors and mass extractors. I can taste whatever they're extracting. It's weird, but since I'm a computer now that's how my human mind is interpreting the info. Smells come from my atmospheric sensors. Touch was pretty much dulled down to nothing, like being covered in latex paint.

Never mind.

If I didn't get myself a humanoid body soon I'll start to forget stuff. Guess it's a matter of having it and not using it and losing it.

A small part of me obsessed with food was writing a script so I could experience things as a human being in my fantasy world in my head.

And no, I don't need a shrink, thank you very much.

I wonder if this is how the pirates of the Black Pearl felt when they found out how badly the curse fucked them over?

When I'm capable of doing so I think I'll eat a pastry first. All I'll need is some taste buds, mouth, esophagus, stomach.

I approach the barn. According to my atmosphere sensors there's a high probability that Racheal brought home a bag of pastries from the mall.

Ax-man does love his sweets when he's in human form. It's gotta be better than grazing on grass all day.

Honey-bun-za!

Missing food so hard . . .

-000-

Eric looks towards where I appeared. "The Xeno Commander is here." Jake and the others immediately stop talking and face the doorway of the barn, which is unlocked by the way. "He has enveloped us in a spherical force field. We cannot leave."

"So much for running away," Marco scoffs.

The two Andalites get up off their bed of hay bales. If they're talking I can't hear them. I've yet to get the equipment to communicate or receive telepathically. Also, the two of them are wearing arm-bracelet things that seem to be made out of nanotech. They have Omnitools. That explains the tunnel. Another good reason to visit the Andalite homeworld.

I've got a list!

Opening the door, "Greetings friends!" then close it behind me.

"He's shorter than me," Marco says.

Thank you for saying the first thing that comes to your mind, mate!

This wouldn't have happened if I was three hundred feet tall. ROB, take notes!

I face towards Cassie as she grimaces. "Should I respond to that?" thumbing the guy.

She shakes her head, no.

"Didn't think so." I shrugged. "Alright folks, here's the deal. As we speak my forces are moving into engage the Yeerks. They'll be gone by sunrise. That's the good news! The sort-of-okay news is that you've got to come with me. The bad news is that there's going to be a lot of drama in the coming days between you and your families since I intend to kidnap them and remove the Yeerks from their heads and their friends. I don't do so well socially. Now! Question and answer time. Do any of you have any reservations before we go to Mars?"

It's very telling that the group just doesn't blurt out the first thing that comes to their heads. They all have eyes on their leader.

Jake takes a step forwards, asserting his dominance and making sure I knew he was in charge. "You said that you could take out the Yeerks in exchange for the morphing cube. How do we know that you aren't just going to take over when the Yeerks are gone?"

I nodded, decent question that.

"I don't really need to "take over" anything," I even made air quotes using all four hands. "Besides, anyone who wants to rule over a planet is insane. Tell 5 billion humans what to do? Not worth it. And if you don't want to pay, then I don't have to do anything. I'll just pack up and leave."

"Like that's going to happen," Marco yelled out. "You're force field told everyone we're here!"

"It's the best kind of deal that it's one that you can't refuse." I say.

Marco goes to say something scathing, but hesitates when Jake sends him a look. "Marco, please," Jakes waves him down, and the other boy goes and sulks with his arm crossed. "Why did you come to this planet in the first place, Commander?"

I think he meant more than just my presence.

"I am a machine," I admitted. "I am the result slash evolutionary development of millennia of waging warfare on a pan-galactic level. Right now my simple desire is to acquire knowledge. I've already hacked and stolen everything of worth from the Yeerks. All I need now is that cube," I point to the box hidden behind a hay bale, "I'll engage in a little solar-warfare, barely an hour's worth, and my reasons for being on this planet will be complete. A fun and profitable trip."

Eric came forwards then, "You stole one of us and our ship."

"It's on Mars right now, and I already returned your friend, good as new," I informed the group. "You can retrieve your precious ship at any time."

"Dude, that was a dick move," Marco says, again being the joke-man.

"Well it's not like they were using it," I replied. "Maybe now they'll get off their exhaust ports and do something. If they want it the Chee can have it. But I got to say, as one Info morph talking about another, I'm very much unimpressed."

"We don't have another ship to get it with, as you well know. It stopped responding to our commands!" Eric gripped.

Okay, time to nip this in the bud.

Marching across the barn, "Whine, whine, whine, you want some cheese?" I go right up to the bot and push him back, throwing him ten feet onto his ass. The others know how heavy the machine is. At an estimated cost of several hundred American million dollars each, you could hit them with a bus all day and never leave a scratch. They knew how heavy they were. "'We want out ship back!" Bah! Come and take it. Damn your pacifist programming. Why don't you go back to the beach, retrieve that Pemalite computer, go steal a bug fighter and get it back? You don't have to kill them you know. Just break all their arms and legs. Take you a single hour, tops."

"You're just a bully," Cassie declared. "You stole their tech."

Turning towards her, "Oh? Let's put this in perspective. Somebody here, ask me how long they've been on this planet. Go on."

"How long?" Jake asks, taking control of the conversation again.

"Fifty thousand years. Do you know what I could do with fifty thousand years of free time?"

"No."

"Well, neither do I!" throwing my hands up into the air. "But it'd be a lot. They do nothing!"

I march back to the front of the barn, shaking it with my stomps.

"Crayak and the Ellimist have turned the whole galaxy into one big game of life. Bunch of meddling no-goods. One minute you're fine and dandy, dandy and fine, then a meteor comes out of nowhere, killing off a sentient race before it gets the chance to do anything. The Ellimist can't help, because by letting them die he can keep three others safe. There's nobody in this galaxy, that I know of, that were as advanced as the Pemalites, because Crayak keeps killing them off before they get that far. Or they migrate far beyond his reach. As for those dog-people, even they had survival instinks. Don't let the Chee fool ya. Want to know what I found on their preshious ship?"

I Smoots Drive teleport in a single Howler arm. The stump had been trimmed and is hooked up to a life support device but it's very much alive.

Marco's jaw drops open.

Cassie is incredulous. "Is that a . . ."

"Howler arm?" I ask. "Yup! Fun fact. Before they could get away one of them almost got onto their ship. So the Permalite overrode the safety features and cut its limb off while it was in the airlock, jettisoning the rest into space. Which it can survive inside of, by the way. Fascinating biology. Also really good stasis tubes. Just as fresh as when it was stored. Now you can all acquire the DNA and morph into one of the most combat-capable creatures in the galaxy. My gift to you."

I set the limb down on a nearby table.

They eyed it warily. But the female andalite, after a lot of silent talking, went over to it and put her hand on the limb. The others reactions after that is different, probably indicating that I spoke true and that she now had the morph.

"Well, I'm getting me some of that," Marco says and goes up to the limb.

I watched as they approached the limb and acquired the morph one by one. The Chee stays silent. As he should be. They're all casting the robot some very odd looks. I could practically read their thoughts.

With this one morph I've just made the kids that much more combat capable. If all of them morphed the creature they could make salsa out of the Yeerk forces on earth and win the war by themselves. It would have been easy! Just like the justice league against an army of lizard men from outer space. Sure they could hurt him, but Superman always wins. Half the books have Visser 3 kicking the Animorphs tails with the creatures he morphs from other planets. Big, dangerous, savage things.

Hell, with the Permalite ship the Animorphs could have done the same thing. Acquire a few morphs from a few planets and their little war could have been won without outside help. It makes it so much easier to hate them knowing that the Chee knew this, and yet did jack shit!

"Do you know one of the worst things in the world you can do, other than kill off one of Crayak creations?" I ask, looking at Jake meaningfully.

He got it. No doubt he was thinking about that contest they had against the Howlers a few months back.

Jake, Ax, Marco, Cassie, Tobias, Rachel, and Eric. Seven of them against the Howlers on an alien world, to decide its fate through ritual combat. The most efficient biological weapons in the galaxy. Faster, stronger, smarter, equipped with X-Ray eyes that allows them to see the organs of their victims and trace the electrical signals of the nervous systems. Their name comes from the screech they project from their vocal cords that's designed to paralyze any thinking being in mid-step.

Kind of an ugly cuss, aren't they?

None of their earth-morphs could fight against one of them when they had surprise on their side, barely escaping with their lives. After a few days running and hiding they had a brilliant idea. With extreme effort, they trapped and then held down one of the Howler's and downloaded some of their human memories into the guy using the alien tech the world uses to trade memories and information.

See, it turns out the Howler's aren't a "race" at all. They're put together in a factory. Have a child-like view of the world, think killing is fun and know nothing else. They have no idea that the people they're killing are actually people. It's all a game to them. They only live for three years, don't know what death is. They have a shared, group memory, showing them all the "victories" they'd had of killing all kinds of aliens for a hundred thousand years. Never defeated.

Or that was the illusion that Crayak maintained, anyway.

Rather than let the group mind of his precious Howler's become infected with human ideas of compassion and empathy, love and loss, not to mention PTSD and a whole bunch of other crap, Crayak eliminated his own forces in an eye blink. Didn't work though. Before they could be killed one single human memory infected the whole population.

That was of a pair of humans kissing.

So the next time Crayak sent his army to murder another race, instead of slaughtering them with extreme efficiency, they attempt to kiss them.

From what I gathered from reading the books, the Animorphs earned Crayak's personal enmity, has a special place put aside on his mantle for their ashes.

"You change them," Jake said, with eyes wide.

I pointed a pointy finger at him. "B-I-N-G-O, was his name-O!" I sang. "Pissing off someone like Crayak gives me all kinds of warm and fuzzies. If we play our hands right in this intergalactic game of poker nobody has to die, and I'll be turning the Yeerks into the biggest force for good the galaxy's ever seen. You with me?"

Ax step forwards and starts making gesture's. Some of them angry, I think.

"If you're talking I can't hear it. I'm a machine. Can someone here translate?" I ask. "Coincidentally, I found your little dome away under the sea. Installed it on my new ship in fact. I don't suppose you know how to contact the Andalite High Command? I have the means to talk to them, but I need an introduction. I'd like to arrange for a trade."

After a long moment Ax turns away from me and crossed his arms in a human gesture he probably adopted from his friends. His tail is twitching, "Fwap, fwap, fwap."

Jake says, "Ax says he could arrange such a meeting if you have the tech, which you seem to have. But they're pretty negative on trading with aliens at the moment." Apparently ignoring whatever he had really said.

"Don't worry, I can be very persuasive." I declared anonymity.

Not really, but all machines are my friends.

"We also want some guarantee that you're not going to harm the earth or the people." Jake finishes.

I hold up one hand, "Scout's honor."

"I don't think you were a scout, ever," Marco says.

Boy does he like interjections.

"I'll have you know I earned all my merit badges from when I was a youth and biologically inclined." I reply.

Rolls eyes. Wish I could do that.

They went back and forth on it a bit but they were just procrastinating.

Eric spoke up. "The Yeerks have arrived. My people outside the dome have had to flee."

Typical. Run away and hide, it's all you're good for.

"I know," I told it. "Didn't think it would stay hidden for long even with my advanced cloaking methods. So, what's it going to be?"

"We have no choice," Jake nodded to one of the others.

Rachel went and got the box and gave it to me.

"No, you didn't. But thanks for not using the self-destruct." I say as I take the unit out of the box.

The box itself was interesting. I spray it down with nanites to assimilate it. Always nice to have a safe place to put my stuff.

Safe as safe can be.

I could have used the Smoots Drive to teleport the thing but since I didn't really have any idea of what's it made of or what was inside the thing the process might have degraded the equipment or something. For most stuff that isn't a problem. But when you have technology that is super advanced, operating on the scale of a planck, the teleportation is very noticeable. It's not 100% instant.

For the Xeno Commander the Smoots Drive is very noticeable. It's like watching a trillion mouths in space taking as many bites as needed to make me disappear in one place and appear in another. The sensation is exactly like getting eaten by a horror movie swarm of insects. Only I'm still alive once I get to the other side. Then it's all over except for damage control while my many many tiny bits put themselves back together.

Human's don't notice it because they lack the senses. Their bodies are delicate, yet they never notice the damage. Kind of like a Russian tank. You can beat the shit out of them and they'll still turn over and keep going on the first try. And any damage they take is so small that most of it is healed in the first few hours.

As for power systems and pure energy?

Well, let me put it this way. If I put the Smoots Drive on a Star Trek ship the first thing the ship's engineer is going to say is, "What happened to the warp core?"

Ergo, anything I created with an energy system in it had to be rebuilt for the Smoots Drive, otherwise we were going to have instances of power outside of their little containment bottles.

170 miles removed from the box. But still not good.

And yes, I already weaponized it.

So that's why I didn't Smoots Drive on the Morphing Cube. If there was a system in it that was pure energy I didn't want anything bad to happen.

As soon as I put it in my hand I knew that this wasn't going to be the end of it.

Before our very eyes the group watched as the cube was absorbed into my hand with nary a ripple.

I'd like to say I had an "Eureka!" moment. Because this was the most amazing thing ever!

I could . . .

I could do all kinds of shit with this!

"Holly crap!" I declared two seconds later.


	16. Arc 3 Chapter 6

"What's wrong?" Cassie asks. "You blow a fuse?"

"Oh, more than that! I think I just got sky high!" I declared as I ran around in a circle laughing. "Oh this is amazing! I can do so much with this! I can pull power and matter from Z space!"

Hahahhahaahahhhhahahhhahhhhahhahhahh!

You know how much power and matter I can pull from nothing?

A lot!

Not as much as a full-sized commander because I'm small, but with this I can make like an "improved builder arm" and a "storage tech" upgrade . A cube. A cube in improved output and capacity. That's my resource core times 3X3X3! By a cube for a cube!

Self-upgrade time baby!

"I'm changing!"

Blue electric ripples moved over my frame as I changed. The same ability that allowed the cell structures of humans to become animals made me into an entirely different being. In seconds I was all new! I didn't look like a statue anymore. More like an actual animal with some decidedly inorganic features. I was black and with silver highlights. I had skin and eyes again!

Red eyes, but that was a thing with me.

"Whoa, check me out! Hey! Watch this!" What were those words again? Oh yeah! Mentally, got to find your still point first. "I am transformed!"

A red light from the inside of my body rippled over the frame as, one by one, the limbs withdrew into the body, "Ca-chunk! Cha-chunk! Ca-chunk!" A set of arms and legs appeared just in time to take their place and stand up. The head folded down/shrunk/was absorbed into the body as another took its place. Forming arms and hands, forming legs and feet, forming chest and torso, and a head.

I opened my eyes. I knew, without thinking about it, that they were red.

"Holly shit he's a transformer!" Marco declared to the stunned youths.

"Hell, he looks like Robocop with Tron lines," Rachel commented, cocking her head to the side. Like a girl to eye a brand new car.

I struck a pose and put my hands on my hips. "What do you think?"

The female Andalite stepped forwards. Carrie looked at her, then at me. "Aloth wants to know exactly how advanced you can be that you can do that."

Eric nodded.

"If the human rate of advance for the last three hundred years remained steady, I would estimate myself at some 30 or 50,000 years more advanced than they are." I replied easily.

To the side I spray down some nanites and make myself a full length mirror.

I really did look like the 2014 Robocop. I was all black and tactical with a red visor. But it also had red Tron lines all over and it looked fucken awesome!

I was much better than that abomination they made in 2014. I mean, they gave the poor bastard a tranq gun for god's sake!

During the "reformatting" of my new body I'd added a few bits of silver chrome steel here and there, mostly around the shoulders, arms and legs, to bring back that 1980s feel. So I was more like the one they made for the video game but I kept the helmet black. I was also bulkier. I looked less like some skinny dude in a black body armor and more like the original with actual armor. The OCP badge on the chest had been replaced with my own icon. I had a data probe in my right hand, of course, but also included a gun in each leg because two-gun-mojo was something I was completely comfortable with and capable of doing.

I waved at my friends and gestured for them to follow me outside. "Come on. Let's see what I can do with this stuff." I said as I grabbed the muffin bag on my way out and fished out a lone pastry.

"Fwap!"

In a strike of lightning Ax's tail snaked out and cut the bag from my hands leaving me holding just a bit of waxed paper. The tail was dexterous enough and he was good enough to then hook the bag before it hit the ground and then bring it back to him. I managed to hold onto one baked good.

I tossed the paper aside and laughed it up with some sheepishness that I totally didn't fake. "Oh? Sorry there about that. I haven't eaten food in a while and I was wondering if I'll remember the taste."

He took the bag into his hands from off his tail and just glared at me.

Once outside we had a good view of a pair of Yeerk ships attacking the dome. So good was my tech that except for a faint hum when the ships fired you didn't even know they were attacking.

"Ax says that that is very impressive." Jake remarked as the light show going on outside fails to do anything but destroy a few trees.

"Yup. They can huff and puff, but they aren't going to touch us." I waved it away as inconsequential.

Back on Mars my fabricators immediately begin taking action for the project I'm about to shove down our throats. A double line of metal storage, mass storage, and energy storage units are assembled partway around the planet. Enough to be seen from space.

My next few minutes saw the completion of a project I'd had in the works for months.

This started out with four normal Energy Plants. Takes less than a second with my latest improvements. Onto these four I place a structure that holds the T2 Energy plant, only taking a full second to build.

Nice upgrade to output. Very satisfactory, yes it is!

Next I create the same structure four times, then fuse it all together into one massive structure. On top of this are a cluster of specially made matter and energy storage units designed to deal with overloads. On top of this is a heavily modified teleporter ring which is covered with a shell of armor, which is in turn covered with Type 1 and 2 Mass Extractors. Actual goddamn cables from the extractors are then wired into the mass and energy storage bins. All of this is overly armored and reinforced, and surrounded by multiple shield walls.

I've just created something new, giggling a bit as I do.

See, when you can create wormholes you can do lots of shit. But that's the same as saying that I took a bone and crafted a needle so I could poke holes in my skins of leather and fur. I didn't know any real shit about poking holes through reality. I didn't have the tools, nor the tech, nor the education or background information. All I had was a bit of shit Tinkertech which was confounding at the best of times and some Progenitor knowledge which was at complete right angles to what I was attempting to do. The results were of much to be desired with the explanations of "Why?" being totally inadequate. To create a wormhole required a certain amount of energy which requires a certain size. Thus the Teleporter.

You can imagine my conversation with someone who asks like this:

Interested observer asks: "What's wrong with the Teleporter? You use it all the time don't you?"

Xeno Commander says: "The Teleporter is fine. But it's like the Stargate, you need two to tango. Size dosen't matter, I can pair up two teleporters or any size down almost to the microscopic level, which is partially how matter and energy is moved around in my economy. The problem is Open-ended wormholes. Big difference. See a Teleporter can get a Commander to another planet in another solar system by making an open-ended wormhole but it requires huge amounts of energy. It also can't compensate for the mechanics of the movements of the spheres. You might be stationary on a planet's surface when you leave, but when you arrive elsewhere you tend to hit the planet with the force of a meteor strike. Hence the explosion on arrival."

Interested observer says: "So you can't make small open-ended wormholes with a teleporter?"

Xeno Commander says: "Correct. Creating an open-ended wormhole with anything smaller than a full teleporter tends to collapse. The result is an open-ended wormhole of a certain size, with only a few sizes available at the moment. Starting at 30 feet wide and getting bigger."

In other words I could make tiny open-ended wormholes with Tinkertech for limited surveillance but are annoying as fuck since it's incredibly maintenance heavy, or create giant ones using the Teleporter. Some aspects could be cross fertilized which is how I managed to create the Smootz Drive. Damn magic-bullshit would blow up if you looked at it cross eyed, which was why I wasn't using it on my surveillance drones. At this point I had several alien tech bases to play with and I still wasn't any closer to understanding most of my Tinkertech. It was all shit anyway.

Worst part was that as a Commander I should have fucking owned this shit. With the technology I have and the speed at which an AI thinks? Please!

I mean most of us have thoughts and we think about how to do things. You get into a discussion with another person about how you can fix that damn shelf and the two of you can generate some good ideas, but execution? Forget about it. I, on the other hand, can create a 400 page condensed work plan that will detail every tool and part needed to get the project done in a minimum of time and was fairly idiot proof and would come out like something from "The New Yankee Workshop."

I grew up with an antenna and a dozen good channels on the TV to watch. It was either that of Barney and Friends (Kill Barney!) Mostly I was just waiting around for the A-Team and Nightrider to get started.

Fuck off.

The speed at which I worked, as I was rapidly appreciating at no end, allowed me to think of something and develop it to its logical conclusion often before a human would have finished having his thought. I was getting used to it, but it still pissed me off to no end to have a technology and being unable to make use of, in full, because all I had was the cheat codes and crap and no work book.

What I really needed was some dimension spanning technology. Something, or a tech base, that would allow me to craft the universe equivalent to a needle and a sewing machine so I could penetrate the universe with full thrust and repeatedly with the right amount of energy to acquire a satisfactory result. I likened this tech to drilling for oil. You can't use a small drill head when you're going several miles deep into the earth! You have to deal with the pressure of the earth on your drill bit, and the pressure the oil is under when you finally get at it. Not to mention all the other hazards.

I WILL fuck the universe.

I needed some finess. But until then I had to just deal with it, my big dumb self and no skills.

What this baby did was open up an open-ended wormhole into the very core of the planet. That's not like drilling into a damn and getting a bit of water into your face, blub-bub. It's also unlike getting a squirt of water under great pressure that can also cut your arm off. Nope! That's tapping into a pool of pressurized metallic hydrogen with great pressure and exposing it to sudden vacuum when I turned it on. Every energy plant I'd had built thus far reversed itself and caused my economy to tank, hard. Reserving just enough energy inside the machine to get it all started. The power generators then switch from generating the wormhole to providing reinforcement using force fields, with a little refinement from the tech I acquired in this dimension to keep it all together.

BA-BOOM! baby!

Good thing I managed to figure out how to transfer the shock wave down into the earth instead of, you know, outwards.

I watched as the counter which had gone about 100K into the red suddenly reverse itself and start climbing somewhat alarmingly. A large amount of the energy and matter being pulled from the planet were being shunted into Z-space. The same technique the animorphs used to alter the mass of their bodies had given my storage units the flexibility they needed. With Zero Space I could draw off as much matter and energy as I wanted without the thing blowing up in my face. Even now many of my storage units were precariously close to popping their unit caps.

I called this my Matter and Energy Planet Tap, or Planet Tap, or PT for short.

Later iterations would open up into the sun itself. I'd had the design for a said T3 Energy Plant for a while, but was unable to create it because even with Progenitor technologies it would blow up from overload. The power being drawn off was greater than the plant could process and tended to blow up which was why it had all these mass storage and energy storage bins plugged into the device itself. I most certainly did not want it looking like some retro science tower device and/or thing! Sigh. But it did.

The fucking thing held.

A few iterations of development and more nanites would get me me a machine that could actually work as a dialable open-ended wormhole generator and give me a feed that wouldn't pop the things like a wine cork in a firehose. Take another day for development and refinement at the speeds I was working at.

Firehoses and death metal. I just thought of that.

Best part was that I could put these babies into space or on mobile units.

Like I said, I WILL fuck the Universe!

-/-

I turned towards the Animorphs as they regarded my creation with wide eyes. They'd especially gotten wider when I explained what I was doing while I was building it. Now that it was glowing and working I doubt they could get moreso.

"Okay, so you can deliver the goods," Marco said with amazement.

"I'm going to need you guys to vacate the premises," I told them as my economy got a boost in power. Management, management, management, so annoying, you know? "Let me do what you've paid me to do."

"Where should we go until it's over?" Rachel asked.

The deep woods sounds good. "Get on Estrid-Corill-Darrath ship and go to Mars. I've made arrangements for your families to follow until this is all over."

They wanted to argue about it for a bit, but once Jake put his foot down that was it. They left. Eric also sent out a transmission to the others of his kind telling them where they were going. His whole robotic race was going to go into hiding.

Puts's.

One of the stealth Ball Scouts followed them to the edge. There they morphed into Andalites to keep up the illusion of the bandits. Todd turned back into a hawk. Once they were ready the shield went down and they all ran for their lives while Eric easily kept pace while also using his hologram to keep them unobserved by the Mark 1 eyeball.

Before I made my move on the Yeerks outside I sent a signal to the rest of my "forces." Each of the Skalorr sentients I kept on my mainframe were doing something, even if it was only watching TV. Those who'd offered to help had control of my robots and started working on both the alien and human machines I had access to.

All over the planet and in the solar system the invading aliens were finding out that their systems had, themselves, been invaded. I'd done this a while ago, but was acting on it now. Handing it off to the war veterans as they took control of the ships. Adjusting the atmosphere so that the occupants lost consciousness. Increasing gravity so they couldn't move. Disabling the ships so that those who were fast enough and smart enough to grab onto an emergency bag of oxygen before the ship could do something to them would be lost adrift in space waiting for pickup.

My forces would pick them up.

Easy really.

I didn't expect everything to be completely bloodless, but I hoped.

As for the people on the ground in front of me? Well . . . .

They landed and disgorged troops, having somehow come to the conclusion that their combined efforts finally brought down the shields. All those buttons and dialsfeeding them such reliable information, you know.

Meanwhile I was able to teleport the entire Yeerk-occupied forces on the planet earth into deep space in little hops using the Smoots drive. It was only 170 or so miles at a jump, but it included an atmosphere. Waiting for them were little glass balls floating in orbit. They appeared inside them for the merest flash of a second, before being teleported to the next sphere with their atmosphere. Since the Smoots drive could make several hundred thousand teleports a second, that was enough to evacuate the nearby town and most of the surrounding real estate of all the humans and most of the animals with only a few dozen glass spheres. Took a minute and sixty seconds to get them all to Mars. But I worked fast that way.

Sometimes some stuff got teleported with them. Those that were in cars found themselves inside of a large cavern on a "road" I'd had painted into the ground with a stop sign in the distance. They'd then be taken out of their car and escorted by a bunch of floating drones and hover trucks I'd had created and taken to a holding facility. If they were Yeerks the holding facility was much like a hospital for the criminally insane. Which they kind of are since they had two people in their heads and one of them was intent on conquering the world. Straitjacket and medication time. They could either willing evacuate their hosts and go back to the pool I'd set up for them or starve of Kandrona. Either worked for me. The human beings who didn't know what was going on went to this resort I'd set up. Kind of like the Mall of America, but on mars, you know?

Not being very good at social interactions I simply wrote them a letter and put it on the beds of the hotel rooms they'd be appearing in.

While all that was happening more-or-less simultaneously my air-ball scouts in stealth mode followed the Animorphs, the Andalites and Eric back to Estrid-Corill-Darrath ship. Now that I had it I could scan the thing and tap into the ship's computers.

It was an old ship, but my first intact sample of Andalite technology. A part of an off-the-books project, and unauthorized, it was in this ship that Estrid created a kind of quantum spacetime program that simulated life. This wasn't nanomachine technology as I usually thought of it. This was using a computer to build a program and essentially transmitting it into T-space and getting a physical result that looks like a nanomachine but is about as "real" as the EMH Doctor from Star Trek Voyager. That was some Weird Science shit right there. The TV show, obviously. Fortunately it was locally isolated. Otherwise some scientist on one planet could create a disease to target a certain irritant species and have it propagate throughout the locally accepted concept of "Universe" and rip them apart at the sub-atomic levels using the very fabric of existence.

I was really glad that only Estrid-Corill-Darrath understood enough about the thing to create it. Of all the Andalites in all the universe there might be five of them that were smart enough and educated enough to understand what they'd created. They'd used the virus once before to kill off the majority of the Hork-Bajar on their homeworld. All she had to do was follow the directions. She was a freak in the brains department, kind of naive, picked on, but she didn't deserve to be a state secret. For the rest of her life the Andalite High Command was going to be watching over her shoulder everything she does until the day she dies. All because of this stupid thing.

Someone once asked, "How would you cure a disease?"

Someone else had answered, "By releasing another disease, of course."

Of course. Another disease to eliminate the first. Another disease to change the host so that they could be immune to the first disease forever more. And with the Quantum Virus I'd have a method to do just that that wouldn't mutate as it was prone to do in organic and mechanical systems of delivery. Used properly I could use this thing to recreate an entire world and populate it with animals and plants without mutations during the intervals and without cloning by having the QVirus create them directly out of the rocks and sand.

In case you can't tell, I'm fucking terrified of the thing I just came into possession of. It was awesome. Mostly in the negative meaning of the word, but also in the positive sense.

Meanwhile my fabricators shut down the force field and reclaimed all the generators. I walked towards the group that had assembled on the other side of the force field, mentally reviewing the alien languages I'd picked up. I tell ya something. After moving around on eight limbs it was nice to be able to stand on two. They noticed the force field going down and saw me walking towards them. I thought they were going to fire, but they didn't.

One of the humans amongst the group in an MIB getup raised his hand. "Halt! Identify yourself."

I came to stop just thirty feet short of him and the other aliens. A pair of Hork-Bajar off to my right were wielding an extra-large pair of Dracon beams, fingering them.

"I am known as Planetary Annihilation's Commander Xeno," I declared to them all. "I have come from a'far to protect this planet and its people from you parasites. If you leave now I will not interfere. If you don't, I shall visit the full force of my abilities upon you."

One of the aliens said something along the equivalent of "Fuck you!" and fired its weapon. The red beam of energy flashed a foot short of the mark. Flame and power deflected into the night air.

I didn't bother shooting back. To me, these insects weren't worthy of the use of my weapons.

I had had dreams of simply walking forwards in a hail of fire, an unstoppable juggernaut.

But this was reality.

Instead I teleported them three miles above the earth and let gravity do its thing. By the time they came down their ships were mine and the rest of the occupants were also doing the falling and shitting thing. For some reason, no doubt contributed to a glitch in their computer codes somewhere, they couldn't take off, use their shipboard weapons, or get the doors to properly lock. When I was done with the ships I then inserted a program that reconfigured the ship's navigational systems. It would take them a few hours to get there, but the US military and all the world was about to see a spectacular takeoff that would put this place on the front cover of all of tomorrow's newspapers.

It was going to drive people nuts. A lot.


End file.
